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THE 

GOSPEL OF THE EE SUBSECTION. 



1 



THE 

GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION 



THOUGHTS ON ITS RELATION TO 
REASON AND HISTORY. 



BY 



BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, D.D., D.C.L., 

LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM. 



SEVENTH EDITION, 



MACMILLAN AND CO. 
AND NEW YOEK. 

1 891 

[The Right of Translation is reserved.] 




EyAoVcoc o AiAack&Aoc hmoon eAereN, 
TINEIOE TPATTEZITAI AOKIMOI. 

MAR 26 1929 

*7rs« Edition printed 1866 (^7a?t. Fc^. 8ro.), Second 1867, 
TOrd 1874 (Cr. 8ro.), Fourth 1879, Fifth 1884, 
S7.rf/i 1887, Seuentft 1891. 



NOTICE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 



JN revising the following pages I have had the 
great advantage of considering two important 
criticisms upon its main argument, one by Mr R. 
W. Macau in his Essay on The Resurrection of 
Christ, 1877, and the other by the Author of 
Supernatural Religion, in the third volume of his 
work, and in two papers in the Fortnightly Review 
for February and March, 1878. It would be 
affectation to say that either writer has brought 
forward arguments which I had not considered 
previously to the best of my ability ; but I gladly 
acknowledge the help which both have given me 
in understanding modes of thought which are 
foreign to my own. I hope that the few verbal 
changes and additions which I have made in the 
W. r 8 b 



vi Notice to the Fourth Edition. 

statement of my views may help to render my 
meaning clearer, where I find that it has been 
misapprehended. One or two errors have been 
corrected, and one or two difficulties have been 
touched upon more fully than before, where the 
reasoning of my critics or my own experience 
shewed such changes to be necessary. But I have 
made the changes silently, for I cannot think that 
the pursuit of the highest Truth is a matter for 
personal controversy. No one, I feel, has a mono- 
poly of Truth. It is enough that in defending 
the Truth which we know, we never consciously 
underrate or neglect the objections of opponents. 
The teacher who either presumes to claim the 
knowledge which he has not, or dissembles his 
own difficulties, carries in his own heart the ele- 
ments of a stern and inevitable chastisement. 



Trinity College, 
Cambridge, 
May 13, 1879. 



NOTICE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 



"OEFORE issuing a new edition of the present 
Essay I have carefully reconsidered the whole 
argument, and by the help of several kind critics 
have been enabled to correct (as I hope) some 
faults and to remove some ambiguities, which 
had been overlooked before. I have not, how- 
ever, made any attempt to alter the general 
character of the book. No one can feel more 
keenly than I do how often I must try the 
patience of my readers, but I believe that any 
one who has felt the difficulties which are touched 
upon, will be willing to follow out in detail the 
lines of thought which are suggested ; and in 
subjects where all language necessarily falls short 
of the truth which we perceive f in many parts 

62 



viii Notice to the Third Edition. 

'and in many fashions/ it seems better to stir 
inquiry, if it may be, than to appear to antici- 
pate and satisfy it. 

Some recent speculations on the scope and 
foundation of Christianity shew with singular 
clearness that even the most candid interpreters 
of the Gospel can still miss its scope. For it 
cannot, as far as I can see, be finally questioned 
by any student of the apostolic records that the 
earliest known description of a Christian is 'one 
'who believes on Christ' and not 'one who believes 
6 Christ! Or in other words, a Christian is essen- 
tially one who throws himself with absolute trust 
upon a living Lord, and not simply one who 
endeavours to obey the commands and follow 
the example of a dead Teacher. The question 
at issue is not the observance of a certain number 
of definite precepts but a view of the whole 
Universe, of all being and of all life, of man and 
of the world, and of God. 

In this aspect the Resurrection is not an iso- 
lated fact, but emphatically a revelation (ch. ii. 
§§ 16 ff.).* If the fragmentary accounts of the 
Resurrection were such as to yield a simple and 



Notice to the Third Edition. ix 

consistent narrative of the restoration of the Lord 
to the circumstances of the earthly life which He 
lived before, it is not too much to say that the 
hope which they convey would be destroyed. 
The marvel of the records is that details which 
mark the identity of the Lord's person are com- 
bined naturally (so to speak) and in the same 
Gospel with details which mark the change in 
the conditions of His personal existence, as if 
those who put the facts together were conscious 
of no difficulty in the apparent contradiction from 
their actual realisation of the new Truth. And 
when we come to combine their narratives we 
find it impossible to form any theory of the 
nature of the Resurrection as a fact like in kind 
to any other facts of our experience which is not 
at variance with some at least of the recorded 
details. Thus if we take one series of events, the 
Resurrection might appear to have been a mere 
coming back to life : if we take another, it might 
appear to be a deduction from a series of appa- 
ritions. Either supposition would be more or less 
consistent with the ordinary course of things ; but 
an examination of the records will not justify a 



X 



Notice to the Third Edition. 



simple choice between the two alternatives. In 
some cases again the manifestations carried with 
them instant conviction to those to whom they 
were made : in others they raised questionings and 
even left doubt. But so far from these variations 
creating a difficulty they lead us to the fullest 
perception which as yet we are able to gain of 
the new life as a fact. If they are held firmly as 
a whole they offer an adequate explanation of the 
faith of St Paul. If on the other hand any one 
series of phenomena be disregarded, we lose some- 
thing either of the reality or of the breadth of the 
revelation : there are features in the unquestion- 
ably contemporaneous faith of the Apostles which 
are left without an adequate explanation 1 . 

Thus as we reflect upon the substance of the 
apostolic records and the experience of the Church 
with more simplicity of heart and more complete 
self-devotion, the more nearly are we brought 
back to the words of St Paul, If thou shalt make 
the confession with thy mouth Jesus is Loed, and 
shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him 

1 I have endeavoured to give a general view of the lessons of 
the different narratives in The Revelation of the Risen Lord. 



Notice to the Third Edition. xi 

from the dead, thou shalt be saved. The acknow- 
ledgment of the present sovereignty of the Son 
of Man in this earliest Creed (to prj^a) rests upon 
faith in the actual Resurrection of the Son of 
Man; and together these two facts, — Christ's 
Sovereignty and Christ's Resurrection — offer to 
men the power and the motive which are required 
for a life of sacrifice and hope. 

This elementary conception of Christianity as 
involving a living relation with One 'who died 
'and is alive again' may be of service in the 
prospect of immediate dangers. For it seems 
to be commonly admitted that once again we 
are approaching a great crisis in the history of 
human society and human thought ; and many 
look with doubt, or even with more than doubt, 
on the adequacy of Christian Theology to meet 
and reconcile the conflicting elements which are 
rising around us. It is, indeed, confessed that 
our distinctive Faith — the Gospel of the Resur- 
rection — contained within it the vital and con- 
structive forces which were able to preserve the 
treasures of the old world from the shipwreck 
of the Roman Empire, to organise and guide the 



xii Notice to the Third Edition. 

fresh energies of the northern nations, to receive 
and consecrate the recovered heritage of Greek 
art and Greek speculation; but there is still 
a vague fear that the dangers by which we are 
now menaced are greater than any which have 
gone before, greater than political dissolution, 
greater than triumphant barbarism, greater than 
paganised culture. It is perhaps necessary that 
it should be so. For while it is comparatively 
easy to estimate the relative value of forces from 
a distant and quiet vantage-ground, all that 
is seen through the dimness and mist of the 
struggle appears gigantic and alarming. Yet 
even at first sight we must acknowledge that 
the past victories of faith cannot but inspire us 
with confidence in entering on that struggle to 
which we are called, and at the same time furnish 
us with those lessons of experience which may 
free us from some natural fears. No one now 
questions that Christianity has been made richer 
and stronger by the loss of the imperial patronage 
with which it was once dignified, by the action 
of the restless freedom of the Teutonic spirit 
upon the personal apprehension of its teaching, 



Notice to the Third Edition. xiii 

by the calm light of ancient literature which 
reveals and harmonizes a manifold variety in the 
providential dealings of God with man. And thus 
taught we can rejoice to believe that the coming 
renaissance of science will minister, no less than 
the past renaissance of culture has already done, 
to the abiding efficacy of the Truth which has 
been handed down to us. 

But though we believe that it will be so, or 
rather because we believe that it will be so, it 
is well for us to prepare for the coming access of 
light, to take account of the whole scope of the 
Truth, to consider what belongs to its essence 
and what to the form in which it is embodied, 
to test the various modes by which men strive 
towards a fuller knowledge of it, to ascertain 
the relation which the particular fragment with 
which we happen for the time to be busied bears 
to the great sum to which it contributes. There 
is a constant and perilous tendency in partial 
study, and all study must be more or less partial, 
to exaggerate details or shapes of Truth, to pursue 
exclusively a method legitimate in one region, 
and so to apply it to inappropriate subjects, to 



xiv Notice to the Third Edition. 

neglect the ennobling inspiration which comes 
from a sense of the magnificence of the whole 
work in which we are allowed to take some 
small part. And this, which is true elsewhere, 
is most true of that study, which is of all the 
widest and grandest, the pursuit and setting forth 
of the science of Theology, to which all other 
sciences contribute, and in which they find their 
crown and consummation, — a unity of idea ac- 
cording to our present forms of thought, and the 
assurance of eternal worth. 

In proportion therefore as the exposition of 
Christian Doctrine becomes more complicated, it 
becomes more necessary to strive to keep ever 
present to our minds the thought of Christ Himself, 
Incarnate, Crucified, Raised, Ascended, in whose 
Person and Work all doctrine is implicitly con- 
tained. And the study of the Bible and the study 
of the Church history are the chief means through 
which the Holy Spirit opens out the understanding 
of our personal faith. Through this double study 
pursued fearlessly and thoroughly, because it is 
pursued in the sight of God and in dependence on 
His Spirit, doctrine and ritual first become really 



Notice to the Third Edition. xv 

intelligible : and though it is a dangerous thing 
to use the word 'proof of subjects to which no 
method of deduction or induction is applicable, 
this double study brings that conviction of the 
truth of Christianity on which the intellect as 
well as the soul of man can rest with absolute 
assurance. As we read the Holy Scriptures with 
more open minds, dissembling none of the diffi- 
culties by which they are beset, claiming for 
them no immunity from the ordinary processes of 
criticism, realising with the most strenuous en- 
deavour every detail of their human character- 
istics, we shall learn what is meant by 'living 
'words,' what is meant by 'the inspiration of a 
' book/ As we follow the progress of the Christian 
society through conflicts and triumphs and dis- 
asters, through periods of threatening gloom and 
rekindled light, often checked and diverted but 
never stopped, often entangled and impeded by 
strange accretions but yet always able to cast 
them off, we shall feel that there is in it a power 
greater than that of man. Such inquiries, so far 
as they are undertaken in fellowship with Christ, 
will enable us to stand in a living relationship 



xvi Notice to the Third Edition. 

with prophets and apostles and confessors, so that 
their words will come to us not as a tradition or 
a formula, but as fresh utterances called out by 
the actual needs of men like ourselves, from the 
hearts of those who sympathised with them. We 
shall find that we are the inheritors of a life and 
not of a system, of a life which is a pledge of the 
unity of all that is seen and temporal with that 
which is unseen and eternal. 

While therefore I do not desire to dissemble 
or to exaggerate the gravity and even the strange- 
ness of the new trial of Faith, the occasion is, 
as I believe, more full of hope than of fear. 
I cannot doubt what the Church of England may 
do, within whose reach are placed the three great 
springs of power which have been given separately 
to other Churches, the simplicity of a pure creed, 
the strength of a continuous organisation, the 
freedom of personal faith. I cannot doubt what 
our own University may do, in which a grave and 
sober intellectual discipline prepares men for 
patient criticism and large-minded research. But 
still the time of labour is short, and if we waste 
it there appears to be no further prospect that 



Notice to the Third Edition. xvii 

the work to which we are called will be hereafter 
accomplished. 

But it cannot be needful to dwell on the 
possibility of this most disastrous failure. The 
symptoms of dissension and confusion and doubt 
among us are rather indications of the restless 
unsatisfied energy of newly awakened life than 
warnings of decay and dissolution. We are, in- 
deed, forced to confess that we have not yet 
shewn practically what Theology is, what the 
Church is, what doctrine is. We have allowed 
questions of social and national right to be dis- 
cussed without reference to that infinite Truth 
which though above our grasp is yet a light by 
which we can guide our course. We have stood 
as Christians so far aloof from secular speculation 
that we have almost forgotten that it must be 
through these lower studies that our apprehen- 
sion of our own unchanging message is advanced. 
We have so persistently dissembled the power 
of the Gospel — the historical reconciliation of 
God with the world and man — that it is pardon- 
able if those who judge of it by us should doubt 
whether it is anything more efficacious and in- 



xviii Notice to the Third Edition. 

spiring than the pathetic guesses which adorn the 
writings of philosophy. But while we deplore 
our faithlessness we can rise out of it. And this 
we must do, if once again we see Christ as the 
ascended Lord, and let the light of His glorious 
Person fall upon our life and upon all life. 

B. F. W. 



Teinity College, 
Feb. 23, 1874. 



PREFACE. 



' EaN OMOAorHCHC TO f>HMA 6N TCp CTOMATI COY OTI 

Kypioc 'Ihcoyc kai nicTeycHC eN th KApAiA coy on 
6 0edc ay'ton HreipeiM eK NeKpooN, coo6hch. 

fJ^HE present Essay is an endeavour to consider 
some of the elementary truths of Christianity 
as a miraculous Revelation from the side of His- 
tory and Reason. There seems to be a growing 
impression, for it is too vague to be called a belief, 
that' such a fact as the Resurrection cannot be 
brought into harmony with what we see of the 
life of the world or what we feel of the laws of 
individual thought. The opponents of Christi- 
anity tacitly assume that a miracle must be ex- 
plained away ; and its defenders neglect to notice 
the manifold lines of culture and thought which 
converge towards the central lessons of the Gos- 
pel and again start from them with the promise 
of richer fruitfulness, If the arguments which 



xx Preface. 

are here adduced are valid they will go far to 
prove that the Resurrection, with all that it in- 
cludes, is the key to the history of man, and the 
complement of reason. At least they will shew 
that the supposed incompatibility of a devout be- 
lief in the Life of Christ with a broad view of the 
course of human progress and a frank trust in the 
laws of our own minds, is wholly imaginary. In- 
deed it is not too much to assert that the fact of 
the Resurrection (as the typical miracle of the 
Gospel) becomes more natural as we take a more 
comprehensive view of history, and more harmo- 
nious with reason as we interrogate our instincts 
more closely. A conviction of the certainty of the 
facts of the Gospel seems to be best gained either 
by the most general or by the most personal view 
of their import. They fill up the most critical 
place in the great record of the progress of man- 
kind; and they satisfy wants which each man feels 
for himself. Christianity has many sides; and 
those are by no means the least noble which are 
thus opened to the student of life and thought. 

The object which I proposed to myself neces- 
sarily involved a mode of treatment wholly un- 



Preface. xxi 

theological. Many topics consequently are dealt 

with otherwise than they would be dealt with in a 
j doctrinal exposition; and many are wholly omitted 

which would have found a place in such a work. 

But while I have endeavoured to avoid technical 
\ language, I trust that no word in the Essay will 

be found at variance with the fulness of Catholic 

truth. 

He who has long pondered over a train of rea- 
soning becomes unable to detect its weak points. 
It is so, I am conscious, with what I now offer to 
the criticism of others. But the only desire which 
he can have who writes on such a subject must 
be to learn the truth fully that in turn he may 
speak it. The questions which are raised are 
momentous and personal. If we believe that the 
answers which I have given are true or like the 
truth, our modes of thought and our lives must 
bear witness to our Faith. 

And it seems impossible not to acknowledge 
that the recognition of the Resurrection a ct 
Which has moulded the thoughts of Christians and 
et retains the fulness of its vital power, is less 
pontaneous and instinctive among us than it 
w. r. c 



xxii Preface. 

ought to be in a Christian age. Nay, more, its 
teachings are not so much neglected as absolutely 
unperceived in popular estimates of what Christi- 
anity claims to be and is. Two passages from 
recent works, which have perhaps nothing else in 
common, will illustrate my meaning. ' There is 
£ no hope/ we are told, ' of a good understanding 
' with Orientals [i.e. Muslims] until Western Chris- 
'tians can bring themselves to recognise what 
' there is of common faith contained in the two 
'religions; the real difference consists in all the 
' class of notions and feelings (very important ones 
f no doubt) which we derive not from the Gospels 
' but from Greece and Rome, and which are alto- 
c gether wanting here [in the East]/ And again : 
' Christian morality (so called) has all the charac- 
' ters of a re-action ; it is, in great part, a protest 
'against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather 
( than positive: passive rather than active: Inno- 
cence rather than Nobleness: Abstinence from 
' Evil rather than energetic Pursuit of Good; in its 
' precepts (as has been well said) " thou shalt not'! 

' predominates unduly over " thou shalt " 

' It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat o i 



Preface. 



xxiii 



' hell as the appointed and appropriate motives to 

'a virtuous life Even in the morality of pri- 

' vate life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high- 
( mindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of 
i honour, is derived from the purely human, not the 
' religious part of our education, and never could 
' have grown out of a standard of ethics in which 
' the only worth, professedly recognised, is that of 
'obedience.' Now, apart from all other criticism, 
to which these statements lie open, it is not too 
much to say that they absolutely could not have 
been written if their authors had realised that 
Christianity is emphatically the Gospel of the 
Resurrection, in which fact lies a spring of human 
dignity and social fellowship infinitely deeper and 
fuller than anything which was anticipated in 
classical teaching. 

During the passage of the Essay through the 
press I have been indebted to many friends, and 
especially to one, for important suggestions and 
criticisms. Of some I have been able to make 
use : others, if an opportunity be given me, I shall 
j* hope to use hereafter ; for all I render them my 
% 'sincere thanks. And the deepest obligation which 



c 2 



xxiv Preface. 

any reader can confer upon me will be to point out 
whatever seems obscure or faulty or erroneous in 
what is here advanced. For writer and for reader 
Truth is the common aim. The subject is not a 
vain thing for us : it is our life. 

B. F. W. 

Cambridge, 

Dec. Uth, 1865. 



NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



~p^Y the kindness of many old and some new 
friends I have been enabled to correct and 
modify and supplement many of the details in 
my original Essay ; but a careful and (as I trust) 
impartial review suggests to me no change in the 
main argument. Indeed every symptom of the 
theological controversies of our own day points 
most distinctly to the paramount necessity of a 
historical appreciation of the origin and develop- 
ment of the Church as the key to the wider ques- 
tions which are opening before us. The Epistle 
to the Ephesians and the writings of St John 
contain in a divine commentary on the Resurrec- 
tion, of which Christian history is the gradual and 
partial fulfilment, the complete solution of the 
greatest problems to which the thoughts of men 
are now being turned, the Solidarity of Humanity 
and the relation of our World to the whole Kosmos. 



xxvi Notice to the Second Edition. 

If my leisure and health had allowed me, 
I should have added a final chapter on the Re- 
surrection and the World, which has for some time 
been drawn up in outline. In this it would have 
been necessary to take account of the ' Positive 
' Religion ' of M. Comte, which in many of its 
characteristic dogmas appears to cast unexpected 
light upon neglected Christian Truths. The 
system offers in fact a very noble, though a very 
partial, view of Christianity in its political and 
social aspects, but without the one essential found- 
ation of a historic Christ 1 . 

It may perhaps be worth while to state that 
the sketch of the Essay was made many years ago 
and that it was written in 1864 and printed in 
the early part of 1865, though it was not pub- 
lished till 1866. I cannot therefore take to my- 
self the credit which a friendly critic gave me of 
' popularising ' arguments on miracles which were 
in time subsequent to my own and wholly in- 
dependent of them. The coincidence of reason- 
ing, if it exists, as I take for granted, is most 

1 [I have now added as an Appendix an Essay which marks 
what appear to me to be the chief points for consideration 
under this head. 1874.] 



Notice to the Second Edition. xxvii 

satisfactory, though practically I believe that there 
can be little difference of opinion on this subject 
between those who will take the trouble to think 
it out in all its cardinal bearings. 

But all speculation leaves the profound con- 
viction that life is stronger than thought; and the 
present season itself proclaims more eloquently 
than many words the Gospel of the Resurrection, 
and, if we are faithful, more convincingly. If 
each Christian would openly e confess with his 
' mouth' the truth which he 'believes in his 
heart,' the world would gladly yield to the glori- 
ous greeting of our Easter morning, f Christ is 
risen.' 

B. F. W. 

St Leonard's, 
Easter Eve, 1867. 



s 

Q 



CONTENTS 1 . 



STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION, pp. 1-14. 

The Eesurrection as the central truth of Christianity (§§ 1-3) 
either true or false : no mean (4). 

Morally a Revelation (5). 
Historically a Fact (6). 

Uniting the objective and subjective elements of 
religion (7*). 
A religion of the world necessarily historical (8). 
The history essentially moral (9). 

Preliminary questions (10). 

INTRODUCTION. 

IDEAS OF GOD, NATURE, MIRACLES. 

pp. 15-54. 

The difficulties of Christianity essentially included in common 
life (§ 1). 

The Resurrection a new fact (2*), and not an explanation 
of mysteries essentially insoluble by us (3), which are 
reducible to the final antithesis of finite and infinite (4). 

I. Christianity assumes the existence of 
An Infinite Personal God, 
A finite human will (5). 
Explanation of the terms (6). 

1 The numbering of the sections is made continuous, but the new sec- 
tions are marked by an asterisk. [Ed. 2.] 



XXX 



Contents. 



Hence we gain some conceptions of 

(a) Nature in relation to God (7). 

The idea of Succession belongs to our apprehension 
of God's action and not to His action in itself (8). 

(/3) Laios of Nature ; simply laws of human observation 

(9) , which include the operation of an unknown force 

(10) , and cannot therefore be absolute (11). 

The generality of Laws decreases as the complexity of 
their subjects increases (12*) ; knowledge complete as 
the subject of it is limited (13*). 

Indeterminate powers in Nature (14, 15). 

II. Christianity claims to be miraculous (16). 

The idea of a miracle (17). 

A miracle not impossible (18), 
nor unnatural (19). 

What natural explanations must be avoided (20*). 

(a) In relation to God 

A miracle not an afterthought (21), 

nor due to a material cause (22). 

(P) In relation to man 

A miracle generally involves an indeterminate element 
(23), 

and is predominantly subject to moral conditions (24). 

Why a scientific age is incredulous of miracles (25), 

though Science and Theology can never meet (26*). 

Theology the highest member in the Hierarchy of 
Sciences (27*). 

Instinct is not conquered by science (28). 

Miraculous records not antecedently incredible (30). 

The alternative (31). 



Contents. 



xxxi 



CHAPTER I 

THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 

pp. 55-137. 

Christianity claims to restore harmony to all creation (§ 1). 
A historical Progress observable in the physical (2, 3) and moral 
worlds (4, 5), 

with which Christianity is intimately connected (6), accord- 
ing to the teaching of the Apostles (7), whether the ad- 
vance was realised among the Jews or Gentiles (8). 

And Christianity itself is a history (9), and has been deve- 
loped historically (10). 

In this lies its distinguishing characteristic (11), which 
centres in faith in the Person of Christ (12). 

If therefore the circumstances of its origin were unique, so 
also may have been the phenomena which it includes 
(13-15). 

I. Christianity in connexion with Universal History. 

(a) The relation of Christianity to pre-Christian his- 
tory (16). 

(a) Jewish History. Characteristics of the history 
of the Jews (17-20). 

(1) The discipline of Egypt (21). 

Sinai (22). 
The Conquest (23). 
The Kingdom (24, 25). 
The Captivity (26). 
The Dispersion (27, 28). 

(2) The development of the idea of a Deliverer (29). 

The doctrine of Messiah (30). 

The Word (31). 
Contrast of the two doctrines (32). 

(b) Gentile History (33). 

i (1) Greek literature and thought (34). 

(2) Koman statesmanship and law (35). 
The crisis (36). 



XXX11 



Contents. 



(/3) The relation of Christianity to post- Christian history (37). 
General outline of its progress (38, 39). 

(a) The Church of the first centuries. Orthodox (40). 

(b) The Medieval Church. Catholic (41). 

(c) The Church of Modern Europe. Evangelical (42). 
The divisions mark a real but not final advance (43, 44). 

II. The special evidence for the Eesurrection (45). 

(a) The testimony of St Paul (46). 

Conclusive as to the universal and definitely ex- 
pressed belief of Christians, within ten years 
afterwards, that the event was historically true 
(47-49). 

(/3) The character of the event 

(a) Excludes the possibility of delusion (50). 

(b) Not anticipated by any popular belief among 

Greeks (51*) or Jews (52). 

(c) Contrary to the Messianic expectations of the 

Jews (53), 
to the ideas of the Apostles (54). 

(7) The effects of the event 

(a) On the character of the Apostles (55), 

(b) On the Apostolic view of the Person of Christ (56), 

(c) Especially on St Paul's teaching on the Death of 

Christ (57, 58) and our relation to Him (59). 

(5) The relation of the belief in the event to other parts 
of Christian doctrine. 

The Keturn of Christ (60). 
The Holy Sacraments (61). 
The Life of the Church (62*). 
Summary (63). 



Contents. 



XXXlll 



CHAPTER II. 

THE RESURRECTION AND MAN 

pp. 138-190. 

The final elements of every moral question : God, the World, 
Self (§2). 

The result of the suppression of any one of these ele- 
ments (3*). 

The individual 1 self (' I ') felt at present to be twofold (4), 
and the antithesis which it includes is essential to our 
personality (5). 

Hence arise the questions (6) 

I. Will our Personality be preserved after 
death ? 

II. What is the future relation of Self to 
God? 

III. What is the relation of Self to the 
World? 

I. Personality, as far as we can see, depends upon the special 
. limitation (body) through which the soul acts (7). 

(a) Eeason can shew that we survive death by shewing 
either that 

(a) The soul will itself have a personal existence ; 
or that 

(b) It will act through an organism corresponding 
to its present one. 

But (a) On principles of Eeason there is no reason 
to think that the individual soul is personal (9). 

(1) The judgment of Aristotle (10, 11). 

(2) The arguments adduced in support of 
the belief apply to the past as well as to 
the future (12). 

(3) Plato's teaching based on instinct not 
reason (13). 



xxxiv 



Contents. 



(b) We have no ground for supposing that the soul 
can take to itself any organisation soever (14). 

Thus there remains a final conflict between Instinct 
and Eeason as to our future Personality (15). 

(/3) The doctrine of the Eesurrection preserves the idea 
of our Personality completely (16). 

This significance brought out gradually (17*). 

The Lord's Body the same (18, 19), 

yet changed (20, 21). 

After death the whole complex nature of man is en- 
nobled (22). 

II. The final relation of man to God depends upon the reality 
and issues of sin (23). 

(a) What reason teaches of sin. 

(a) The possibility of sin included in the idea of 
a finite, free being (24). 

(b) Its realisation not required for moral deve- 
lopment, though in some forms it may be sub- 
servient to it (25-29). 

(c) It is indeed essentially foreign to our nature, 
and yet when once realised permanent in its 
effects (30-32). 

Thus there remains an Instinct which looks for 
forgiveness of sin, and Reason which points 
to the inexorable sequence of the results of 
action (33). 

(j8) The light which the Eesurrection throws on the 
forgiveness of sin (34). 

In what way the Lord's Suffering and Triumph 
belong to us (35-41). 



Contents. 



XXXV 



III. The relation of Self to the World. 

This is indicated by the dignity assigned to the body 
(42), which is the seed of that which shall be (43). 

Effects of the doctrine : 

I. Morally as to the individual and society (44-46). 

II. Physically in relation to the outer world (47, 48). 
Summary (49-51). 

CHAPTER in. 

THE RESURRECTION AND TEE CHURCH. 

pp. 191-247. 

The Eesurrection in relation to the history of the Church 
(§§ 1*, 2*). 

Various images under which the Christian society is described. 

(a) A Kingdom (3, 4). 

(|3) A Temple (5, 6). 

( 7 ) A Body (7). 

How these images are seen in the light of the Eesurrection. 

(a) A spiritual kingdom : a new heaven and a new 
earth (9, 10). 

(/3) A structure reared through many ages and hal- 
lowed by One Spirit (11). 

(7) The visible Body of the Eisen Christ (12). 

Contrast between the fundamental idea of Christianity as the 
basis of a society and those of 

Paganism (15). 
Judaism (16). 

The principle of unity (18, 19) 

illustrated by the Eesurrection (20). 

The principle of life (21). 



xxxvi 



Contents. 



I. The essential unity of the Church does not require exter- 
nal unity (22, 23), 

nor one visible centre of authority such as was for a time 
established at Jerusalem (24), till ' the end of the world' 
(25*), and afterwards at Eome (26). 

The extent of variation consistent with sub- 
stantial unity not to be determined ante- 
cedently (27) ; 

yet illustrated by the history of the Jewish 
Church (28). 

The admission of the necessity of variations 
in the Church does not sanction secta- 
rianism (29, 30). 

We have to deal with a world in which sin is 
realised (31*). 

Progress itself implies antagouism (32) and 
individuality (33). 

II. The essential unity of the Church seen in its historic 
development (34, 35). 

This development one of organisation (36), 
not of doctrine absolutely (37), 
corresponding to the general progress of 
civilisation (38), and the complexity of the 
Christian Body (39). 
Hence it includes many partial and transitional 
developments, which are set aside when their 
work is done (40). 
How far this development is due to human imperfec- 
tion (41). 

Scripture the unchanging test of development (42). 
Our age presents an epitome of all past ages (43). 
The function of national Churches (44*). 

Churches like nations 'redeem each other' (45). 
Grounds of hope in the midst of the contradictions 
of modern life (46, 47). 
Conclusion (48). 



STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. 

Ka\6v to a6\ov mod 77 ekirh fJLeydXrj. 

PLATO. 

1. XEAN PAUL, in one of his magnificent state- 

■ & MENT 

w Dreams, has endeavoured to present question. 
po the mind an image of the infinite extent and 
illness of the Universe. He represents his own 
lisembodied Spirit as carried by thought from 
ystem to system, through the starry skies under 
pe conduct of some Angel of light. Wearied at 
pngth and bowed down with the overwhelming 
pise of his littleness as he traverses the desolate 
itervals between world and world, he prays that 
^ may go no further: 'I am lonely in creation; 
ionelier in these wastes. The full world is great ; 
but Vacancy is greater/ And the answer came : 
n the sight of God there is no Vacancy. Even 
3W, O child of man, let thy quickened eye be- 
pld, and thy dreaming heart embrace the depths 
K Being which are around thee/ Then his eye 
s opened and a sea of light filled all the spaces 
ich had seemed desolate before, and his heart 

W. R. 1 



y 



2 



The Resurrection is the 



state- felt the presence of an unspeakable power, swell- 

MENT ... . . 

question. m §" m var ^d forms of existence around him. 

Suns and planets were seen to float as mere 
specks in the vast ocean of life which was re- 
vealed to him. For a time he was conscious of 
no pain. Immeasurable joy and thanksgiving 
filled his soul. But in this glorious splendour his 
guide had vanished. He was alone in the midst 
of life, and he yearned for some companionship. 
'Then there came sailing onwards,' he continues, 
' from the depth, through the galaxies of stars, ? 
' dark globe along the sea of light ; and a humai 
'form, as a child, stood upon it, which neithe: 
f changed nor yet grew greater as it drew near 
c At last I recognised our Earth before me, and 01 
' it the Child Jesus, and He looked upon me wii 
f a look so bright and gentle and loving, that 
f awoke for love and joy.' 

2. The thought which inspires this grai 
vision is that which I now wish to develope ar. 
confirm. It is my object to shew that a belief ' j 
the Resurrection of our Lord is not indeed t 
solution (for that we cannot gain), but the il J 
mination of the mysteries of life : that in t 
fact the apparent contradictions of the immensi 
and insignificance of the individual are harm 
nized : that in this lies an end to which p 



central Truth of Christianity. 3 

Christian history converged, a spring from which state- 
post- Christian history flows : that in this man question. 
finds the only perfect consecration of his entire 
nature : that in this there is contained a promise 
for the future which removes, as far as may be, 
the sense of isolation which belongs to our finite 
nature, and unites our world again to the absolute 
and eternal: that in this, to sum up all briefly, 
we may contemplate Christianity in relation to 
■ history, to man, and to the future, not as a vague 
'idea, or as a set of dogmas, or even as a system, 
but as the witness to actual events, in the sub- 
stantial reality of which lies all its power and all 
its hope. 

I 3. At the outset it is important to define the 
ield within which the foundation of our inquiry 
lies, and to close it within the narrowest limits. 
St includes only the Cross and the Sepulchre, 
it is open to the full light of day. The Death, 
jhe Burial, and the Resurrection of Christ, claim 
b be facts exactly in the same sense, to be sup- 
Wted by evidence essentially identical in kind, 
Id to be bound together indissolubly as the 
joundwork of the Christian Faith. If they are 
oie, then they will be seen to form the centre 
^lund which other truths group themselves, not 
' ks real, nor less significant, though they are not 

1—2 



4 The Resurrection 

state- equally capable of being directly subjected to 

MENT . 

question, historical tests. If they are not true, then ' is our 
' faith vain/ Christianity is a name and nothing 
more, a sentiment, an aspiration, the expressions 
and not the satisfaction of human need. 



4. The natural indistinctness of common lan- 
guage leaves room for a vague impression that 
in this case there is some mean between truth 
and falsehood : that though the Resurrection 
was not a fact (as the Crucifixion was a fact), j 
yet it was something more than a fiction : that Ij 
it expressed (it may be) an intuition or a divine 
belief. Yet it is obvious that the power of the 
Resurrection, as the ground of religious hope, lies ] ! 
in the very circumstance that the event whid 
changed the whole character of the disciples wai 
external to them, independent of them, unex- 
pected by them. We are speaking here, of course f 
of things as they present themselves to the sense? Ij 
and in this light the Resurrection claims to hav 
been so far a fact of the same order as the Buria 
of the Lord. Its objectivity is essential to its sit 
nificance. A conviction that a particular pers- 
had risen again, when he had not, is simply fall 
however it may have been produced. And if tl 
conviction embodies itself in a circumstanti 

(Hi 

narrative of facts intended to establish the ima£ 

! 1 



true or false : no mean. 5 
nary event, the narrative is simply a falsehood and state- 

J > 1 J MENT 

^nothing more. There are cases, as, for example, question. 
Jin the description of the tumult of a battle, where 
fictitious or unreal details convey a relatively true 
.idea of the whole. It is obviously impossible 
either to record or to apprehend the multitudi- 
Inous phases of action which go to fill up a com- 
plicated and changing scene; and the genius of 
an artist may be able to convey to others the 
jreality which he has himself grasped through re- 
presentative incidents moulded to his purpose. It 
Light be so, within certain limits, with the details 
\)f the Resurrection. But ' if Christ be not risen,' 
(t is the whole and not the details which, on 
.ch a supposition, is imaginary. The Resur- 
rection then is either a fact in itself wholly in- 
dependent of those who were witnesses to it, or 
; is a fiction — it matters not whether designed 
V undesigned — on which no belief can be found- 
1. It is a real link between the seen and the 
■Wen worlds, or it is at best the expression of 
/human instinct. Christ has escaped from the 
jxuption of death ; or men, as far as the future 
jconcerned, are exactly where they were before 
k came. Whatever may be the civilizing power 
•Christian morality, it can throw no light upon 
grave. If the Resurrection be not true in 
same sense in which the Passion is true, then 



6 The Resurrection 

state- Death still remains the great conqueror. As far 
ment _ , , n 

question, as all experience goes, no pledge has been given 

to us of his defeat. A splendid guess, an inex-j 

tinguishable desire alone have sought to pierce; 

the darkness beyond the tomb, if Jesus has not 

(as we believe) borne our human nature into the, 

presence of God. 

5. When once we grasp clearly the momen-j 
tous interests which are involved in the belief m 
the Resurrection, we shall be prepared to under- 
stand how it formed the central point of the 
Apostolic teaching ; and yet more than this, ho^i 
the event itself is the central point of historv 
primarily of religious history, and then of civ 
history of which that is the soul. It often seem!) 
indeed as if we do not realise the vastness of t 
consequences which it brings. An influenti 
Christian teacher has said that the ResurrectK 
belongs to the teaching on Scripture rather th 
to the teaching on the Person of Christ, forgetti | 
that faith in Christ as the Saviour, so far as t c 
was a Gospel for the world, did not prece 
but follow it. Even those who hold most fin 
to a faith in the Resurrection are tempted', 
regard it as a doctrine rather than as a fact, as * 
article of belief rather than as a sensible grou 
of hope. Gradually we have been led to dissoci 



] 



morally a Revelation. 



7 



"aith in the resurrection of the body from the state- 

MENT 

xctual Resurrection of Christ, which is the earnest question. 
of it. And not unfrequently we substitute for 
the fulness of the Christian creed the purely 
philosophic conception of an immortality of the 
soul, which surrenders, as we shall see hereafter, 
I the idea of the continuance of our complete per- 
sonal existence. But according to the divine 
instinct of the first age, the message of the 
Resurrection sums up in one fact the teaching of 
jbhe Gospel. It is the one central link between 
(:he seen and the unseen. We cannot allow our 
thoughts to be vague or undecided upon it with 
mpunity. We must place it in the very front of 
ur confession, with all that it includes, or we 
lust be prepared to lay aside the Christian name. 
|ven in its ethical aspect Christianity does not 
iffer a system of morality, but a universal principle 
[f morality which springs out of the Resurrection. 
|ie elements of dogma and morality are indeed 
.{separably united in the Resurrection of Christ ; 
jc the same fact which reveals the glory of the 
)rd, reveals at the same time the destiny of man 
l fd the permanence of all that goes to make up 
fulness of human life. If the Resurrection be 
I it true, the basis of Christian morality, no less 
Ian the basis of Christian theology, is gone. The 
pue cannot be stated too broadly. We are not 



8 The Resurrection as a fact 

state- Christians unless we are clear in our confession on 

MENT 

question, this point. To preach the fact of Resurrection* 
was the first function of the Evangelists; tcj> 
embody the doctrine of the Resurrection is the? 
great office of the Church ; to learn the meaningj 
of the Resurrection is the task not of one agei 
only, but of all. Yet there seem to be times! 
when the truth has a special significance : times> 
like our own, when the spirit of material progress 
tends to confine the thoughts of men within thq 
limit's of its own domain; when we are in constant 
danger of forgetting the larger relationships ok 
human existence, because we find within us and 
around us enough to distract and occupy our 
thoughts ; when the sense of the infinite vastness 
(so to speak) of our present finite being turns the 
soul away from its natural aspirations towards tile 
absolute and the unseen. 

6. This is one aspect of our subject. Tile 
Resurrection is a revelation, so far as such ' a 
revelation is possible, of the spiritual world aAid 
of our own connexion with it. But it has ajiso 
another aspect as a fact in the common history 
of the world. Its essentially objective character 
is not less important than its divine message. 
For we may notice that a religion which is to 
move the world must be based on a history. 



\ 



the basis of Christianity. 9 
A religion drawn solely from the individual con- state- 

MENT 

sciousness of man can only reflect a particular question 
form of intellectual development. Its influence 
is limited by the mould in which it is cast. Its 
applicability is confined to those who have at- 
tained to a special culture. Even to the last it 
is essentially of the mind and not of the heart 
or of the life. This is obvious equally from the 
record of the speculations on Natural Theology, 
and from the history of all those religions which 
have had any power in the world. A subjective 
religion brings with it no element of progress 
and cannot lift man out of himself. A historical 
revelation alone can present God as an object of 
personal love. The external world answering to 
human instinct suggests the conception of His 
eternal power, but offers nothing which justifies 
in us the confidence of 'sons.' Man is but one 
of the many elements of creation and cannot 
arrogate to himself any special relationship with 
his Maker. Pure Theism is unable to form a 
living religion. Mahommedanism lost all reli- 
gious power in a few generations. Judaism sur- 
vived for fifteen centuries every form of assault 
in virtue of the records of a past deliverance on 
which it was based, and the hope of a future 
Deliverer which it included. 



10 The fact and the idea of the Resurrection 

state- 7. Briefly the Gospel of the Resurrection 
question, harmonizes in itself the objective and subjective 
elements of religion. On the one hand it reposes 
on a fact which however unique yet claims to be- 
long to the circle of human experience. On the 
other hand the fact is such that its personal 
appropriation offers the widest scope for the ener- 
gies of spiritual life. The Resurrection is suffi- 
ciently definite to take religion out of the domain 
of caprice and rest its hopes upon a foundation 
external to the believer ; and it is so far-reaching 
in its ultimate significance as to present itself to 
every age and every soul with a fresh power. It 
gives faith a firm standing ground in history, and 
at the same time opens a boundless vision of the 
future development of our present powers. It 
brings down dogma to earth and then vindicates 
the infinitude of the issues of temporal existence. 
By the definiteness of its actual occurrence it gives 
dignity to all human action : by the universality 
of its import it lifts the thoughts of the believer 
from the man to the race and to the world. It 
stands, so to speak, midway between the seen and 
the unseen: it belongs equally to the spiritual 
and to the material order, and it reconciles both : 
it gives immediate reality to the one by the mani- 
festation of the Son of man who ' came forth from 
the Father and went to the Father;' it ennobles 



equally necessary to Christianity. 11 
the other by the revelation of a divine presence state- 

J 1 MENT 

in the world according to His word, Who said, ' Lo, questkw. 
I am with you all the days.' In both respects its 
teaching is essential to Christianity. Exactly in 
proportion as it is lost sight of in the popular 
Creed, doctrine is divorced from life, and the 
broad promises of divine hope are lost in an 
individual struggle after good. 

8. It is possible that individual exceptions 
may be found to the truth of these statements. 
Faith is indeed without question the spring of 
all progressive or universal religion; and the 
essence of faith lies in the transference of trust 
to something outside the believer. Yet on the 
other hand some great souls appear to have an 
immediate perception of isolated truths, so that 
in their case a thought becomes a distinct reality, 
contemplated, as it were, apart from the thinker. 
For such men faith in a thought is possible, and 
is the source of all that approaches most nearly 
to a new creation in human history. These soli- 
tary heroes can in some measure at least live as 
seeing the unseen by the force of their innate 
power; but for the mass faith needs some out- 
ward pledge to rest upon, and some outward fact 
to call it into action. Exactly in proportion as 
the popular idea of religion is separated from the 



12 The Resurrection supported 

state- personal relation of the worshipper to the Deity, 

MENT 

uestFon attested (or supposed to be attested) by historical 
manifestations, the worship itself degenerates into 
a discipline or a form. Even Christianity is 
capable of such a degradation ; but we need only 
to go back to the Evangelists to regain a pure 
conception of its majesty. As it is seen in their 
narratives it satisfies equally the wants of the 
few and of the many ; and that most signally in 
the message of the Resurrection, which was the 
assurance of the establishment of the kingdom 
of God. The facts of the visible Life of Christ 
are for all time a living Gospel ; and the doctrine 
which they include meets and carries forward the 
boldest speculations of philosophy. 

9. For it is evident that the events recorded 
by the Evangelists while they are most truly his- 
torical are not merely history. Their significance 
is not in the past only or even chiefly. And so 
also the evidence by which they are supported is 
not simply that of direct testimony. The au- 
thority of testimony is supplemented by that of 
the instinct 1 within us which recognises that the 

1 The word is open to many objections, but I can find no 
other to express the spiritual impulse through which man's 
constitution expresses itself, as it is slowly trained by the 
circumstances of life. Experience shews that it is as much a 



by internal evidence, 13 

idea of a Divine Revelation corresponds with the 
essential wants of man. Man feels that he was 
born for God, and looks for some sign to assure 
him of the reality of a fellowship with the unseen. 
The feeling will shew itself in the course of the 
whole education of humanity in many ways, but 
it is not without its appropriate discipline. A 
Divine Revelation must from the very nature of 
the case tend to satisfy the loftiest conception 
which can be formed of man's destiny. If it does 
not do so, it is condemned by the instinct which 
looks for it. Thus in discussing the truth of the 
Resurrection as a fact it is impossible not to take 
into consideration its moral significance. Evidence 
which would be felt to be insufficient to prove the 
occurrence of a prodigy, may be amply sufficient 
to establish the objective reality of a fact which is 
found to answer to the circumstances or condi- 
tions of our nature. Nay more, it may be af- 
firmed that no external evidence alone could 
ever establish more than an 'otiose' belief in 
the occurrence -of an isolated or seemingly ar- 
bitrary miracle in a distant age, while the 
combination of external and internal evidence 
is capable of producing a measure of conviction 

part of his nature to turn to Gor> as it is to turn to the light. 
Eeason and experience in each case help him to determine 
how he shall best do that which he was made to do. 



Outline of the plan. 



state- which is only less certain than an immediate 
ment J 

question, intuition. 

10. But in order to estimate the spiritual 
significance of the Resurrection we must first 
take into account the relation in which it stands 
to many elementary thoughts which lie at the 
very foundation of our ordinary life. Above all 
it is necessary that we should set down clearly 
what must be taken for granted and not proved : 
what is the conception which we form of Nature, 
and of miracles : what are the limits within which 
human speculation is confined. Till these points 
are determined, as far as they seem to admit of 
determination, all further discussion must be 
fruitless. If, for example, a miracle is inherently 
incredible, it is idle to reason about a fact which 
in the end must be explained away. If on the 
other hand we hold that miracles are, in certain 
cases, as credible as ordinary events generally, it 
is necessary that we should shew how this belief 
is reconcileable with the ideas which we entertain 
of an Infinite God and of the constancy of natural 
laws. These fundamental questions will form the 
subject of the Introduction ; and afterwards we 
shall be in a position to consider the Resurrection 
in itself and in its application to History, to the 
Individual, and to Society. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Tpe<povTai irdvTes oi duOpuirLUot vbfxoi virb ei>6s tou Odov. 
Kpareei yap toctovtov ok6<tov eWAet /ecu e£ap/ceet irdaiv /ecu irepi- 
ylverai. 



HERA C LIT US. 



1. f I ^HE simplicity of the Gospel is not due introduc- 

f . TION. 

to the absence of difficulties, but to the 
coincidence of the difficulties which it involves 
with the inherent difficulties of human existence, 
when existence is taken as a subject of specu- 
lation. Christianity does indeed involve many 
difficulties, but it does not create them. The dif- 
ficulties themselves beset us in our daily life (§3); 
but as long as they take a practical form, they 
receive a practical answer. However arduous it 
may be to form a clear conception of responsible 
freedom, we treat others and ourselves as respon- 
sible. Christianity, however, which reveals the 
significance of life makes us also feel its mysteries. 
It brings out what was ill-defined before, like the 
light which does not make the shadows, though 
they are seen by contrast with it. The truth 



16 The Resurrection a new Fact 

introduc- involved in this distinction is of vital importance 
tion. _ 1 

towards the understanding of its claims. We are 
so constituted that we must look beyond and 
beneath the phenomena of physical life. We 
cannot acquiesce in ignorance ; and that religion 
necessarily claims our allegiance which answers 
most completely to all the conditions of our na- 
ture. If it could be shewn that Christianity in- 
troduces some idea into life wholly alien from its 
common tenor, or assumes principles which we do 
not act upon, or asserts consequences at variance 
with the natural reason of men, we might pause 
before receiving its teaching. But if on the con- 
trary its mysteries rest on fundamental mysteries 
of our finite being ; if it takes its stand on human 
nature as it is and interprets its aspirations ; if it 
carries on thoughts of which we feel the begin- 
nings within ourselves, and opens gleams of hope 
where we acknowledge that our prospect is clouded ; 
then it cannot but be monstrous to reject it for 
reasons on which we might with equal justice 
declare life itself to be impossible. 

2. For it is necessary to bear in mind that 
the Resurrection is not primarily an explanation 
of existing phenomena, growing out of them or 
introduced to explain them, but a new fact added 
to the sum of human experience. The fact may 



The Resurrection a new Fact. 17 

prove to be an explanation of mysteries which intooduc- 
are already felt, so far as it opens a way towards 
their solution by bringing them into connexion 
with another order of being, but in itself it claims 
to take its place among the events of human his- 
tory. Like all historical facts it differs from the 
facts of physics as being incapable of direct and 
present verification. And it differs from all other 
facts of history because it is necessarily unique. 
Yet it is not therefore incapable of that kind of 
verification which is appropriate to its peculiar 
nature. Physical science deals with law as uniform 
and consequently its results can be tested at any 
moment. History generally records the average 
results of human action, and its heroic passages 
are judged by the tendencies which are observed 
towards similar displays of exceptional power in 
less moving crises (§ 11). And so the Resurrec- 
tion, the fact that Christ rose from the grave and 
did not again die — the one fact absolutely un- 
paralleled in itself and in its circumstances — is to 
be taken in connexion with the whole course of 
human life, and with that instinct of immortality 
which from time to time makes itself felt with an 
overwhelming power. Its verification lies in its 
abiding harmony with all the progressive develop- 
ments of man and with each discovery which 
casts light upon his destiny. 

w. r. 2 



18 The final Mysteries of Life remain. 

3. It is on this new fact that Christianity first 
rests its claims. It asserts that the Resurrection is 
itself a Gospel. For the rest it makes no attempt 
to lessen or remove the problems by which all life 
is perplexed. For instance, the existence of mat- 
ter, the relation of soul and body, the existence of 
evil, existence absolutely and in time and space, 
individual freedom and general laws of sequence, 
are all fundamental and final mysteries from 
which we can never escape. They are taken ac- 
count of and dealt with in the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, but Christianity does not make them. It 
will be seen hereafter how they are dealt with, 
but for the present it is enough to notice that the 
rejection of the mysteries of Christianity will not 
eliminate the element of mystery from life. We 
are absolutely unable to form a conception of a 
beginning or of an end of things. The very idea 
of life involves the antithesis of finite and infinite, 
and the special difficulties which have been enu- 
merated simply represent the various forms which 
this one fundamental difficulty assumes when con- 
templated in connexion with the physical world 
or with human action. 

4. This antithesis of the finite and infinite 
which meets us as soon as we lift our thoughts 
above single phenomena is the final basis of all 



Fundamental Assumptions. 19 

religion. It is apprehended more or less sharply introduc- 
in different ages or races, but the essence of wor- 
ship even in its lowest form necessarily includes 
the tendency towards a true perception of it. In 
this respect Christianity differs from all other 
religions, not in principle, but in virtue of the 
absolute clearness with which the idea of the 
antithesis is laid down. The two terms are re- 
garded in their most complete separation and in 
'the fulness of time' they are combined in one 
Person. But in saying this we are anticipating 
what will appear more naturally afterwards. It 
is not necessary yet to consider how Christianity 
resolves or harmonizes the antithesis on which it, 
equally with all religions, is founded. That which 
is essential to our argument is that the antithesis 
itself is not brought into being by Christianity, 
but is the clear expression of that element in 
man's nature, which has sought at all times to 
embody itself in religious thought and worship — 
in thought as well as in worship : for the mind 
which strives to establish its own relation to the 
unseen by the worship of a God, is always led at 
the same time to ponder on the relation of the 
World to the same Power. 

5. Christianity therefore as the absolute re- 
ligion of man assumes as its foundation the exist- 

2—2 



20 Fundamental Assumptions. 

introd uc- ence of an Infinite Personal God or rather of a 

TION. 

Heavenly Father of absolute power, justice and 
goodness, and a finite human will (ii. § 2). This 
antithesis is assumed and not proved. No ar- 
guments can establish it. It is a primary in- 
tuition and not a deduction. It is capable of 
illustration from what we observe around us ; 
but if either term is denied no reasoning can 
establish its truth. Each man for himself is 
supposed to be conscious of the existence of 
God and of his own existence. We can go no 
further. If he has not, or says he has not 
this consciousness, he must be regarded as one 
whose powers are imperfect. It would be as vain 
to reason with him on religion as to reason on 
the phenomena of light with a blind man. No 
proof can establish the existence of that within 
a man of which he alone has the final cognisance. 
Practically every one is found to act as if he 
believed that he had a will, and also as if he were 
justly accountable for his actions : he is conscious 
of satisfaction within himself, and awards praise 
or blame to others; but whether this be univer- 
sally true or not is of no real moment to us. It 
is taken for granted that religion is possible ; and 
if so the conceptions which are involved in the 
fundamental antithesis on which it reposes are 
also assumed to be true, though they do not 



Nature in relation to God. 



21 



admit of a formal proof. If they are not axioms introduc- 
we claim them as postulates 1 . 

6. But though we appeal to the individual 
consciousness for the recognition of the truth of 
the assumptions which have been made, the lan- 
guage in which one term of the antithesis is ex- 
pressed requires explanation. We speak of God 
as Infinite and Personal. The epithets involve 
a contradiction, and yet they are both necessary. 
In fact the only approximately adequate concep- 
tion which we can form of a Divine Being is 
under the form of a contradiction. For us per- 
sonality is only the name for special limitation 
exerting itself through will ; and will itself im- 
plies the idea of resistance. But as applied to 
God the notions of limitation and resistance are 
excluded by the antithetic term infinite 2 . For us 

1 It might appear at first sight that the Eeligion of M. Conite, 
which is a powerful reality for those who hold it, is an exception 
to the truth of these statements. In fact it is the strongest 
testimony to their necessary validity. The ' Great Being ' — 
the sum of humanity— which is the object of worship, satisfies 
the condition of ' Infinity ' by embracing in itself all the past, 
the present, and the future in the conception of the wor- 
shipper : it satisfies the condition of ' Personality ' by the con- 
cession whereby each worshipper is encouraged to realise the 
whole by looking at it as partially represented by an indivi- 
dual. On the other hand M. Comte distinctly recognises 
human freedom within certain (undetermined) limits. 

2 From this it is evident how utterly false it is to represent 



22 Nature in 

introduc- again infinity excludes the conception of special 
action : it belongs to the nature and not to the 
manifestation of being. But as applied to God 
it is necessarily connected with action and with 
phenomena, because it is only through these that 
personality, so far as we observe it, can shew 
itself. Thus it follows that by speaking of God as 
Infinite we simply mean that none of the deduc- 
tions which can be drawn from corresponding 
attributes or powers, or the uses of power in man, 
can be transferred to Him. It would be false 
for instance to argue from the usual sense of the 
terms employed that what He 'does' or 'pur- 
poses' is in itself bound by time and space. And 
on the other hand by speaking of Him as Per- 
sonal we wish to express that He rules and creates 
as if it were by will, with a purpose towards 
which all things are guided. So only can we 
guard against the representation of God as the 
Absolute simply, whether the Absolute be re- 
garded as the Unchangeable which lies beneath 
the changing phenomena of the world, or as the 
sum of all that ' is'. 

the Christian (theological) philosophy of the world as based on 
the conception of ' a world governed and created by wills of 
which the model is in the human will.' For the use of the 
word ' will ' in such a philosophy is simply analogical, and 
checked at every application by the supplementary idea of 
Infinite Power. 



relation to God. 



7. This conception of the Divine Being, introduc- 
which, it must be remembered, is not peculiar to 
Christianity, except in the distinctness of its enun- 
ciation, clears the way to our apprehension of the 
course and phenomena of nature. For we can- 
not contemplate nature apart from God. But it 
may be said that such a conception of God be- 
longs only to a late age : that the primitive 
notions of God are simpler and ruder : that it 
is unfair to claim as natural to man thoughts 
which have a limited currency after the lapse of 
incalculable time. To such an objection it is suffi- 
cient to reply that we are in no way concerned 
with the manner in which the conception has been 
fashioned. The question is whether man has 
gained it, whether he was made to gain it, 
whether it covers the facts of his spiritual ex- 
perience ? The child includes the man poten- 
tially ; and the principle which holds true of the 
development of the individual holds true with 
necessary modifications of the development of the 
race. Meanwhile this conception of God is as- 
sumed, and we must use it. Hence it is against 
reason to press the results of our observation 
of phenomena to consequences inconsistent with 
our conception of His infinite and personal 
Being. Two errors are specially to be guarded 
against which are most fruitful of fallacious 



24 Succession not true for God. 

introduo issues. The one is the transference of the phe- 
nomena of succession and gradual growth and 
slow sequence, which are necessarily part of our 
observation of nature, to nature as the expression 
of the Divine will. The other is the supposition 
that 'laws' have in themselves (so to speak) a 
motive force : that the law, which declares the 
mode in which phenomena present themselves to 
us, has some virtue by which the phenomena are 
absolutely ; or, in other words, that the Law not 
only declares how we see things, but makes them 
such as we see them. Each of these misconcep- 
tions will require to be noticed a little more in 
detail. 

8. The only idea which we can form of 
nature, that is of the sum of all phenomena, in 
relation to an Infinite Mind is as one thought. 
For God all is one and at once\ He is cognisant 

1 The reader will be glad to dwell on the thought as it is 
worked out in Tennyson's noble words : 

To your question now, 
Which touches on the workman and his work. 
Let there be light and there was light : 'tis so ; 
For was, and is, and will be, are but is ; 
And all creation is one act at once, 
The birth of light : but we that are not all, 
As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, 
And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make 
One act a phantom of succession : thus 
Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time. 



Laws of Observation. 25 

(if we may so say) of things themselves, and not, in troduc- 
as we naturally think and reason, of our percep- 
tions of them. He sees them as they are and not 
as we observe them. Indeed, if we reflect, there 
is something strangely absurd in applying to the 
Divine Power conclusions which are based on 
human apprehensions of things. We must, be- 
cause we are finite, conceive of things as hap- 
pening in time ; and in the same way we must 
conceive of God as acting, whenever He acts, 
in time ; but it is equally clear that we must not 
argue as if time belonged really to the Divine 
relation to the world, or as if God acted at this 
time and that, or at every moment, one after 
another. Any conclusion which rests on this 
supposition as a premiss is radically false. The 
statement that ' God acts' is true at all times 
in regard to our human conception of Him. 
We can say justly that He acts now, that He 
acted then, and that He will act at some future 
moment ; but when we reason on the human 
element in these statements, that is on the tem- 
poral limitations, it is obvious that this process 
of reasoning can give us no conclusion with re- 
gard to the action of God. 

9. Again, a 'law of nature' can mean no- 
thing else than the law of the human apprehen- 



26 Laws presuppose Force. 

sion of phenomena. We are forced to regard 
things under conditions of time and space and 
the like, and the consequence is that phenomena 
are grouped together according to certain rules. 
We find that for us (such is the constitution of 
our powers) the sequence of phenomena is this 
and not that. Partial sequences are compared 
and combined and thus more general sequences 
are discovered. But however far we may go we 
never go beyond ourselves. The law at last is 
a law for men : its form depends on limitations 
which are characteristic of men. We have not 
the least reason for supposing that it has any 
absolute existence. For to say that things when 
observed by men will be observed by them under 
such and such limitations and therefore ac- 
cording to such and such laws, is obviously a 
very different thing from saying that such and 
such are the laws of things in themselves and 
for all intelligent beings. And if we know no- 
thing of the laws of things in themselves, how can 
we know anything of things in relation to God ? 

10. From what has been said it is evident 
that a law, which expresses nothing more than 
the result of our observation of phenomena, cannot 
make phenomena what they are. It is no expla- 
nation of how the phenomena came to be or con- 



Laws of Observation in Nature. .27 

tinue to be. It would have appeared to be insist- introduc- 
ing on a truism to dwell on this, were it not for 
the general idea which seems to find currency, 
that when a law (as of gravitation) is laid down 
nothing more remains to be explained. The law 
may afterwards (it is admitted) be found to be 
part of one much wider and more comprehensive, 
but, as far as it goes, this satisfies all our inqui- 
ries. In reality it tells us that something pro- 
duces results (as far as we are concerned) in such 
and such a way. But obviously if the knowledge 
were within our reach our chief desire would be 
to know what produces the results ? What brings 
about the phenomena according to the law ? We 
can shew that if a body be projected in a certain 
direction and acted upon by a central force vary- 
ing in a particular way it will describe an orbit 
like that of the earth round the sun. But to go 
no further, What projected the earth ? It would 
be easy to follow up this question by others ; but 
this alone is sufficient to shew that in the sim- 
plest phenomena we are face to face with a power 
of which observation can tell us nothing but the 
fact of its existence. 

11. There is then nothing absolute in ] aws 
of nature. They are relative to man, and do 
not explain either the origin or the preservation 



28 Laws of Observation in Nature. 

iNTRODuc- of things. It is quite possible for us to conceive 
that the unknown power through which pheno- 
mena are produced according to an observed way 
might have caused them to be produced in an- 
other way wholly different. The belief in the 
immutability of the observed law springs wholly 
from ourselves, and is simply a special expression 
of the axiom that the same power will produce 
the same results under the same circumstances. 
But we have no right to assume that the circum- 
stances will always be the same. The range of 
our observation is bounded within very narrow 
limits. And yet further if, as we have supposed, 
the Divine thought of the world leaves room for 
the exercise of free human will, it is antecedently 
likely that we should be enabled in some way to 
be made sensible of what we call by a figure the 
Divine will. We may expect from time to time 
in the evolution of the whole scheme of creation 
to be made aware of the presence of a Personal 
Power, not by the suspension of the laws of 
sequence which we commonly observe, but by 
the action of some new force. Or to put the sub- 
ject in another light; as changed circumstances 
would lead to different results under the action of 
the same power, so we must allow that there are 
many cases in which the exertion of the free 
human will must modify not indeed the Divine 



Laws of Observation in Nature. 29 
action in itself, but the phenomena in which the introduc- 

' 1 TION. 

results of it are presented to us. The building of 
a city, for example, which depends on the free 
action of individuals, may modify to an almost 
indefinite extent the physical character of its im- 
mediate neighbourhood, and so more or less of all 
other districts, in a manner which we can gene- 
rally follow out; and thus also we can conceive 
that the natural (though unseen) action of God 
may make itself felt with varying distinctness in 
the course of ages, though in this case the law of 
sequence is undiscoverable by us. At least gene- 
rally it is undeniable that if we believe in the 
existence of a Personal God by whose influence 
we are affected, there is no more difficulty in 
admitting the reality of His action in various 
ways and degrees on the physical world, than in 
recognising it (as we do) in our own souls. In- 
deed the difficulty in the latter case is greater ; 
for it is perhaps impossible for us to conceive how 
the Infinite Divine will can act on the human will 
(as it is felt to do) without destroying the freedom 
of man. 

12. What we can observe of the actual ' laws' 
of phenomena tends in some degree to illustrate 
the general manner and limits of this modification 
of effects by the introduction of new forces. It 



30 Laws modifiable. 

introduc- holds true universally that the generality of a law 

TION. . . 

decreases as the complexity of the subject with 
which it deals increases. In other words, when a 
result depends upon the combined working of 
many elements the probability of variation is in- 
creased. The action of each element may suffer 
alteration as to intensity or duration, from causes 
which are not calculable by our powers of obser- 
vation. The results of physical laws, for instance, 
are only infinitesimally modifiable when compared 
with the results of biological laws. In the former 
case we can approximately take account of all the 
interfering forces, but in the latter case forces are 
brought into play which, as far as can yet be 
known, escape all individual estimation, either as 
to their actual or as to their potential energy. 
In Sociology this uncertainty is confessedly yet 
greater. In Theology, which completes the philo- 
sophy of life by uniting it with a higher Order, 
the same progression continues, and it is as un- 
reasonable to expect results absolutely universal 
in their observed form relative to us in Theology, 
the crowning science of being, as it would be to 
exjDect the results of Sociological laws to admit 
of a mechanical or chemical or biological ex- 
pression. Each higher science in the ( hierarchy' 
includes the action of those below it according 
to their special laws, but at the same time it 



Indeterminate Powers in Nature. 31 



introduces new forces by which these simpler introduc- 
results are variously modified (§ 26). 

13. The same truth may be set forth yet in 
another way. Even if it is admitted uncondition- 
ally that our present knowledge is of phenomena 
only, it is obvious that the phenomena are of dif- 
ferent orders, extending from those which mark 
the conditions of our observation (e.g. time, space) 
to isolated facts representing the resultants of the 
action of a multiplicity of forces, which facts, from 
the nature of things, are severally unique. Some 
of these may be general : others may be excep- 
tional. In some we can analyse the result and 
reduce it to simple results of known ' laws ' : in 
some the problem is indeterminate. And exactly 
as the subject rises to a nobler elevation our 
knowledge becomes more incomplete. Complete- 
ness indeed is but another name for ascertained 
limitation. The grandest and highest faculties 
of man are exactly those in which he most feels 
his weakness and imperfection. They are at 
present only half-fulfilled prophecies of powers 
which, as we believe, shall yet find an ample field 
for unrestricted development 1 . 

1 The student of Browning will recall countless passages in 
which he illuminates this truth. 
For thence — a paradox 
Which comforts while it mocks — 



32 



Indeterminate Towers 



m TK?N UC ~ ^* ^ n a wor( i; it is evident from the extent 
of creation, of which we see but the least fraction, 
and from the connexion of its parts one with an- 
other, and from the presence about us of forces 
which we are wholly incompetent to estimate, 
that we are absolutely unable to judge, whether 
we may not from time to time be capable of call- 
ing into action ourselves or otherwise coming 
under the influence of powers which are usually 
dormant. Every one must have felt at critical 
moments that he has a fund of physical strength 
and also a capacity for moving others by vigour 
of will of which under ordinary circumstances he 
is wholly unconscious. The crisis brings out the 
gift, and when the crisis is over we fall back again 
into our usual state. Nor is this the case with 
individuals only. History shews that there are 
epochs of extraordinary, and as we should say, 
who live in calmer times, of unnatural activity 
and power in societies and nations. A city or a 
race under the pressure of some great passion 
works wonders. Above all religious enthusiasm, 
whether in men or in bodies of men, is capable of 
producing results which under ordinary cireum- 

Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail : 
What I aspired to be, 
And was not, comforts me : 

A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale. 



in Nature. 



stances would be regarded as impossible. It seems introduc- 

. . . . TI0N - 

as if the idea of an immediate intercourse with a 

spiritual world, quite apart from the special form 

which it takes, were able to quicken man's powers 

with a marvellous energy and in some degree to 

work out its own accomplishment. 

15. Thus in contemplating nature from its 
moral side we find ourselves in the presence of 
two indeterminate forces. Not only are we forced 
to admit that there is room in the whole scheme 
of the world (of which we are poor and imperfect 
judges) for changed conditions which necessarily 
include changed results ; but also we find that 
men and mankind generally are possessed of facul- 
ties capable of vast and indefinite energy. We 
cannot measure, as we cannot explain, the influ- 
ence which one mind can exercise on another, or 
which the mind can exercise on the body. The 
influence is obvious, but what are the springs and 
what the limits of it we cannot tell. In such a 
case even past experience is no final judge. And 
this reflection brings us to another fundamental 
assumption of Christianity. 

16. Christianity assumes, as we have seen, 
the existence of an Infinite Personal God and of a 
finite human will : it claims also to be miraculous. 

w. r. 3 



34 Christianity essentially Miraculous. 

introduc- It takes for granted that 'miracles' (§ 17) are 
recognised modes of Divine action. From the con- 
ception which we are necessarily led to form of 
the relation of Nature to the Creator it has been 
shewn that exceptional action in its course is not 
only not excluded by the laws which we base on 
observation, but even antecedently likely. Chris- 
tianity affirms that this exceptional action does 
actually take place. And in doing this it only 
affirms what every other historical religion must 
affirm ; for all alike appeal to an immediate reve- 
lation as their original basis. It follows then 
that all religion which can influence the mass of 
men (p. 8, § 6) is declared to be impossible if 
such an exceptional manifestation of God is in- 
conceivable or unaccomplished. Nothing remains 
but a faith which begins and ends within the in- 
dividual. But not to dwell on this, it is evi- 
dent that if the claim to be a miraculous religion 
is essentially incredible apostolic Christianity is 
simply false. If Christ did not rise again — the 
words cannot be too often repeated — then is our 
faith vain. Something may be left — a system of 
morals or the like — but that is not Christianity. 
The essence of Christianity lies in a miracle ; and 
if it can be shewn that a miracle is either im- 
possible or incredible, all further inquiry into the 
details of its history is superfluous in a religious 



The idea of a Miracle. 35 

point of view. The rise of Christianity will still 
furnish a historical or philosophical problem of 
surpassing interest, but the data which it presents 
will contain nothing on which to found the faith 
of a world. Thus we are forced to consider whe- 
ther the difficulties which are supposed to lie in 
the conception of a miracle are a fatal hindrance 
to the literal acceptance of the Gospel. 

17. By a miracle (using the word in its 
strictest sense) we mean a phenomenon which 
either in itself or from the circumstances under 
which it is presented, suggests the immediate 
working of a personal power producing results 
not explicable by what we observe in the ordi- 
nary course of nature. Thus some facts are in 
their essential character miraculous, as the Re- 
surrection ; others, again, are perfectly natural in 
themselves, but miraculous from the circum- 
stances under which they occur, as the miraculous 
draught of fishes or, to take a different example, 
the true prediction of a special event. But they 
have this in common, that they lead us to recog- 
nise the action of some personal power : they 
involve, as a general rule, an appeal to or a de- 
claration of divine strength. Some facts again, as 
many of the cases of healing, may be regarded as 
natural or miraculous, according as we look at 

3-2 



36 Miracles not impossible. 

iNTRODuc- them as resulting from powers already existing in 
man and evoked by special circumstances, or as 
immediate acts of divine blessing. This indeed is 
a mere question of interpretation. The principle 
is attested in a single case. He who believes in 
the Resurrection will feel no anxiety as to the 
exact limits within which the divine working is 
to be confined. Probably he will see it every- 
where and that even in the same sense, for the 
difference or identity of mode will seem to him 
to depend on causes which he cannot investigate. 

18. From what has been already said it will 
be seen that a miracle cannot be declared impos- 
sible by any one who believes in a Personal God. 
Nature is the expression of His will, and ante- 
cedently to experience we could not have deter- 
mined that it would be manifested in one way 
rather than in another. Nor again can all con- 
ceivable experience give us a complete knowledge 
of the conditions which may affect its manifes- 
tation to us so as to exclude variety. On the con- 
trary under particular circumstances which may 
happen if God reveals Himself to men, miracles 
are as probable as ordinary phenomena under 
common circumstances. If the result is different, 
the power being the same, we suppose that the 
conditions are different ; and conversely if the 



Miracles not unnatural. 



conditions are different, we suppose that the introduc- 
tion. 

result will be changed. Nor, again, in speaking 
of a fact as a miracle do we offer any explanation 
of its being or becoming. The mystery as to how 
God acts is left untouched. Whether He acts as 
He ordinarily does (naturally), or in an extraor- 
dinary way (miraculously), this fundamental diffi- 
culty remains absolutely the same. It is neither 
greater nor less in the one case than in the 
other. The power which produces the pheno- 
mena is indeterminate and indeterminable. Thus 
while it would be impossible that two and two 
should ever make five, because the law on which 
the result depends lies wholly within us ; yet it is 
not impossible that an (unknown) power which 
as far as our observation reaches has always pro- 
duced (say) four phenomena of a particular kind, 
should on a particular occasion produce five such 
phenomena. 

19. Yet further it will appear that a miracle 
is not unnatural, that is contrary to and not 
only different from the observed course of phe- 
nomena. It would be unnatural only if it were 
supposed that the miraculous and the ordinary 
result were both produced by the same force 
acting under the same conditions. Or, if for a 
moment we may use popular language, if it 



38 Miracles not unnatural. 



introduce were supposed that the same law could produce 
different effects. But on the other hand it is 
distinctly laid down that in the case of a miracle 
a new force is introduced, or rather, as the source 
of all force is one, that the force which usually 
acts freely in a particular way now acts freely in 
another. That is, to continue to use popular lan- 
guage, the law is not suspended, but its natural 
results are controlled. The law produces its full 
effect, but a new power supervenes, and the final 
result represents the combined effect of the two 
forces. Let it once be seen that the law neces- 
sarily involves the idea of a power acting accord- 
ing to the law, and acting freely, for the law is 
evidently subsequent to and not essentially regu- 
lative of the action, and there will be no more 
difficulty in feeling thai; the miraculous action of 
God is as truly natural, that is in accordance with 
what we may expect from a consideration of the 
whole scheme of nature, as His ordinary action. 
To affirm that miracles are unnatural is to consti- 
tute general laws of observation into a fate supe- 
rior to God, or to deny His personal action. And 
it must be observed that the denial of His per- 
sonal action in the physical world involves the 
denial of His action on the hearts of men; for 
there is not the least reason to suppose that what 
is seen is less immediately dependent upon Him 



Miracles not an afterthought 39 

than what is unseen, or that it can be affirmed introduc- 
tion. 

beforehand that He is more likely to act on 
one part of that which He has created than on 
another. In other words, if miracles are un- 
natural, then we are hopelessly enclosed within 
the barriers of material laws and absolutely 
shut off from all intercourse with the Infinite. 
But this is against the fundamental axiom of 
religion. 

20. While, however, it is maintained that in 
this larger sense of the word miracles are ' natural/ 
it is necessary to guard carefully against two ex- 
planations which have been given to account for 
their occurrence naturally ; and the more so 
because they have obtained a popular currency. 
Some have said that a miracle is but the com- 
pression, so to speak, of results which are obtained 
slowly and successively in the general course of 
things. The water, it is argued, which was made 
wine by a word at Cana once, is made wine by the 
vintage every year. The slightest reflection will 
shew that these two processes, as far as we can 
follow them, have absolutely nothing in common, 
so that the one cannot even illustrate the other. 
But even if the parallel were perfect it would be 
equally nugatory, for in that case it would tend, 
in proportion to its completeness, to exclude the 



40 Miracles not an afterthought 

introduc- idea of personal action which is of the essence of 
a miracle. The same remark holds true of the 
second false explanation, which is in every way 
more profound and, even, in some aspects, un- 
answerable. It is alleged that natural laws, like 
some mathematical series, may be intermittent, 
so that by the action of the same law one result 
may be given for a thousand (or a million) times 
in succession and a different result next time. 
Miracles then, it is argued, may be the exceptional 
terms of such an order. They certainly may be, 
but if so their permanent significance is destroyed. 
Their moral and spiritual value vanishes at once 
when they are derived from the constant action 
of the same forces as commonly work around us. 
A miracle, if it has any real existence, lifts man 
truly and not in appearance only above the laws 
of the present general order. 

21. It may however be objected that this 
view of miracles as occasional manifestations of 
the power of God is a conception unworthy of His 
Majesty: that it represents Him (so to speak) as 
dependent on time and circumstance. The objec- 
tion, as far as it has any force, would lie equally 
against all action of God among men. It is, 
indeed, a mystery wholly beyond our comprehen- 
sion how an Infinite Being can reveal or in any 



Miracles not an afterthought 41 

way manifest Himself to finite creatures. But in introduc- 
obedience to the bidding of our spiritual na- 
ture we have taken it for granted that He does 
so. And yet further the invidiousness of the 
objection lies in the transference to God of those 
ideas of time and succession which as we have 
seen (§ 8) are proper only to men. There is no 
'occasion' to God. The world and all its history 
is for Him necessarily one. His action which we 
contemplate now in one (general) mode and now 
in another (exceptional) mode, is not in itself 
divided, though we are forced so to regard it. 
The principle (if we may so speak) which accord- 
ing to His wisdom directs the form of the general 
action and the principle which directs the form of 
the exceptional action, are not separated, so that 
the one is subsequent to and corrective of the 
other, but simultaneous or coincident. What is 
unfolded to us in a gradual process of 'becoming' 
in relation to an infinite mind simply 'is.' We 
are obliged to speak of 'the purpose of God's 
'will/ and so we are obliged to speak of His 
'Special Providence' or miraculous working; 
but the original phrase and the adaptation 
of the phrase to facts are both accommoda- 
tions ; and we must carefully guard against any 
deductions based upon the human element in 
them (§ 6). 



42 Not necessarily due to a material cause. 

introduc- 22. Nor yet again can it be said that mate- 
rial results involve a material cause. We know 
absolutely nothing of cause. We know nothing 
of the power manifested in material results (§ 10). 
And unless we believe in the eternity of matter, 
(which is an absolute contradiction,) some material 
results must have had an immaterial cause. More- 
over we experience daily the influence of will in 
ourselves, and this is not material. And it has 
been assumed that our finite will is a real power 
and potentially free, for otherwise religion is as 
completely destroyed as by denying the person- 
ality of God. 

23. There is yet another aspect in which we 
may regard Miracles. Viewed from the human 
side, when man himseK is looked upon as the 
centre of the power by which they are wrought, 
they fall into distinct groups, corresponding to the 
subject-matter (so to speak) on which they are 
wrought. Thus man may be conceived as acting 
upon the external world absolutely, where the 
general law is modified by his interference, as if 
he were to walk on water or control the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies : or he may act upon 
the external world in immediate relation to him- 
self or to those about him, as if he were to modify 
the perception of external phenomena in particular 



Miracles in relation to man. 43 



cases : or he may act upon man directly, either introduc- 
himself or others, as in the removal of disease. 
Now in the two latter cases an indeterminate 
element is introduced, the influence of man upon 
man, or the working of spirit upon spirit and 
matter in limited relation to itself; and prior to 
observation it is impossible to determine what 
varying effects may be produced by its opera- 
tion. Experience alone can determine in each 
instance what phenomena may be produced by 
human will ; and the vast range of the power of 
will and the unknown depth of its relations, sug- 
gest the possibility of an almost infinite variety 
of results produced by its action under new con- 
ditions. From time to time we are startled by 
occurrences which reveal a power of one mind 
over another, or of the mind over the body which 
seems to be practically indeterminate. In these 
cases then there is (it may be said) a natural open- 
ing for miracles : they have a point of contact with 
what we observe in the course of life. So far then 
we must be careful not to lay upon some e miracu- 
lous' phenomena a weight which they will not 
bear. But in the first case, on the contrary, this 
'natural' conception of a miracle is inadmissible. 
We can understand how the individual will can 
affect other individuals upon whom it can work 
immediately, but we cannot see how it can act 



Moral limitation 



introduc- upon the external world with which it has, as far 
tion. 1 

as we know, nothing homogeneous, or, which 
would come to the same thing, upon the universal 
perception of men. Thus in miracles of this kind 
we are face to face with a final difficulty, which 
(from this point of view) culminates in the Resur- 
rection. Yet even here the miracle has a cor- 
responding phenomenon in life. Special prayer 
is based upon a fundamental instinct of our 
nature. And in the fellowship which is esta- 
blished in prayer between man and God we are 
brought into personal union with Him in Whom 
all things have their being. In this lies the pos- 
sibility of boundless power ; for when the con- 
nexion is once formed, who can lay down the 
limits of what man can do in virtue of the com- 
munion of his spirit with the Infinite Spirit ? 
The distinctions thus indicated ought never to be 
overlooked in arguments on miracles, but in one 
respect all three cases are alike. Whether man 
works upon nature or upon his fellow-men, it is in 
virtue of a trust in the unseen. Personal faith is 
the condition of effectual action ; and where God is 
supposed to act immediately the same condition 
is satisfied in the recognition of His working. 

24. It follows that the moral element in mi- 
racles is both essential and predominant. There 



of Miracles. 



is always a natural relation between the acts and introduc- 

J TION. 

those for whom or by whom they are wrought. 
The external phenomenon which would in one age 
and to one people suggest the idea of the personal 
working of God would not do so in another age 
and to another people. The effect of the fact, and 
miracles are always supposed to be directed to 
an end, depends upon its inherent characteristics 
and the capacity of the witnesses to apprehend 
and interpret them. To use a mathematical phrase 
miracles must therefore be (generally speaking) 
a function of the age in which they are wrought. 
That which on one occasion would be felt to be 
a personal revelation of God might convey an 
impression wholly different at another. The mi- 
racles of one period or state of society might be 
morally impossible in another. It seems certain 
that knowledge limits faith, not indeed as dimin- 
ishing its power but as guiding its direction. For 
instance, when any particular physical phenomena 
are apprehended as subject to a clear law, which 
is felt to be a definite expression of the Divine 
Will, it is inconceivable that faith could contem- 
plate an interference with them, not because it 
would be impossible, but because the prayer for 
such an interference would itself be disloyal. For 
example, it would be positively immoral for us 
now to pray that the tides or the sun should not 



46 Aspect of Miracles 

introduc- rise on a particular day. The corresponding act 
is represented in the Gospels as suggested by the 
Tempter. There is even a divine 'cannot' recog- 
nised in the Gospels as well as a divine 'must/ 
But as long as the idea of the physical law which 
rules them was unformed or indistinct, the prayer 
would have been reasonable, and (may we not 
suppose) the fulfilment also. We cannot act when 
we feel that our influence is excluded ; and may 
not the converse also be true ? May not all things 
be possible for us which we firmly hold to be 
possible, if at least the result would be such as to 
convey as its whole and general effect the idea of 
the personal action of God ? An age records only 
what it believes; but, in a certain sense also, it 
does w T hat it believes. 

25. These reflections serve to explain the 
real force which lies in two remarks on miracles 
which have at present gained a very wide cur- 
rency. It is said that 'a belief in miracles de- 
' creases with the increase of civilisation;' and, 
further, that ' our age in virtue of its advanced 
' civilisation is essentially and inevitably incredu- 
' lous of miracles/ Within certain limits both ob- 
servations are undoubtedly true, but the limits 
within which their truth is circumscribed exclude 
the deductions which are drawn from them. The 



in a Scientific age. 47 

sense of the antecedent likelihood of a miracle introduc- 
tion. 

proceeds from a comprehensive view of all nature, 
moral and physical, according to the full develop- 
ment of the mutual relations of its parts, as con- 
stituting a scheme for us practically infinite. But 
the necessary condition of all scientific inquiry, 
and the progress of science is here assumed to be 
the test of the progress of civilisation, is to put out 
of sight the indeterminate element in nature, and 
thus to unfamiliarise the mind with those aspects 
of the world in which the miracle finds its proper 
place. And not only so, but the requirements of 
exact science bind the attention of each student 
to some one small field, and this little fragment 
almost necessarily becomes for him the measure 
of the whole, if indeed he has ever leisure to lift 
his eyes up to the whole at all. The more inti- 
mately we are acquainted with any one subject, 
and the more sensible we become of the fulness of 
thought which it contains, the less we are fitted to 
take a due measure of its proper relations to other 
subjects, or to acknowledge practically and with- 
out effort that the conditions under which we 
contemplate it are not in themselves absolute. 
Thus in an inductive age laws of observation are 
treated, and with a view to the immediate results 
which are sought, treated rightly, as laws of nature. 
If the moral element of life — the idea of person- 



48 Theology the last member 

introduc- ality — be neglected, we cannot of necessity take 
tion. J . . 

account of any results which are not entirely phy- 
sical. For physical students as such, and for those 
who take their impressions of the universe solely 
from them, miracles can have no real existence. 
Nor is this all : not miracles only, and this is com- 
monly forgotten, but every manifestation of will is 
at the same time removed from the world : all life 
falls under the power of absolute materialism, a 
conclusion which is at variance with the funda- 
mental idea of religion, and so with one of the 
original assumptions on which our argument is 
based. 

26. At the same time such considerations 
shew that there can be no antagonism between 
Theology and Science as they are commonly con- 
trasted. So far as these keep within their proper 
limits they move in distinct regions. Their re- 
spective paths lie in parallel and therefore in 
unintersecting planes. Theology deals with the 
origin and destiny of things : Science with things 
as they are according to human observation of 
them. Theology claims to connect this world with 
the world to come : Science is of this world only. 
Theology is confessedly partial, provisional, ana- 
logical in its expression of truth : Science, that is 
human science, can be complete, final, and abso- 



in the Hierarchy of Sciences. 49 

lute in its enunciation of the laws of phenomena, introduc- 
tion. 

Theology accepts without the least reserve the 
conclusions of Science as such : it only rejects 
the claim of Science to contain within itself 
every spring of knowledge and every domain of 
thought. 

27. This holds true of the lower and more 
exact forms of Science which deal with inorganic 
bodies; but as soon as account is taken of the 
Science of organic bodies — of Biology and Sociology 
— then Science itself becomes a prophet of Theo- 
logy. In this broader and truer view of Science 
Theology closes a series, ( a hierarchy of Sciences/ 
as it has been well called, in which each successive 
member gains in dignity what it loses in definite- 
ness ; and by taking account of a more complex 
and far-reaching play of powers opens out nobler 
views of being. The Sciences of form and num- 
ber are absolute for man and have no tendency 
to lift the individual out of himself. They are 
purely human and individual. The Sciences of 
inorganic bodies add the idea of external imper- 
fectly-known forces to the universal conditions of 
human observation and thereby enlarge and ele- 
vate the scope of Science while they take away 
its claims to absoluteness. The Sciences of or- 
ganic bodies by claiming to deal with the pheno- 
w. r. 4 



50 Records of Miracles 

introduc- mena of life and will in all their separate and col- 
tion. m 1 

lective forms bear a wider margin of indetermi- 
nate problems and carry our thoughts beyond the 
region of certain knowledge. The Science of 
Theology, which is last in its complete evolution 
as it is first in instinctive apprehension, completes 
the progression, and by unfolding that which is 
permanent in life prepares a solid passage from 
the temporal to the eternal. The individual mind, 
the material world, humanity, God, form the cen- 
tral subjects of the successive groups of Sciences. 
Each Science, it will be seen, takes up into itself 
those Sciences which have gone before, but adds 
to them elements peculiar to itself (§ 12). To the 
last the laws of each are of full force within their 
proper sphere though the results which are pro- 
perly due to them are liable to be modified by the 
interference of forces acting according to other 
laws. And thus in due order knowledge which 
begins with the knowledge of the conditions of 
human observation culminates in the knowledge 
of God, a knowledge infinitely less perfect than 
the former but at the same time infinitely more 
ennobling. 

28. While then we admit that the tendency 
of a scientific age is adverse to a living belief in 
miracles, we see that this tendency is due not to 



not antecedently incredible. 51 
the antagonism of science and miracle, but to the introduc- 

& y TION. 

neglect and consequent obscuration by science of 
that region of thought in which the idea of the 
miraculous finds scope. And even here the power 
of general feeling makes itself most distinctly felt 
against the power of abstract reason. Exactly 
when material views of the universe seem to be 
gaining an absolute ascendancy, popular instinct 
finds expression now in this form of extravagant 
credulity, and now in that. Arrogant physicism 
is met by superstitious spiritualism ; and there is 
right on both sides. The harmony of a true faith 
finds a witness to its fulness in this independent 
assertion of the antithetic elements which it tem- 
pers and reconciles. 

29. It is however foreign to our purpose to 
consider what may be the causes which impress 
a very distinct character on different cycles of 
miracles, and on the form which the belief in the 
miraculous assumes at different periods. The 
investigation itself is full of interest, and contri- 
butes in a remarkable degree to illustrate the pro- 
gressive forms of revelation. But for the present 
we are concerned simply with the possibility of a 
miracle, which is seen to be included in the idea 
of a Personal God. Whether the possibility 
has been realised in the Resurrection still remains 

4—2 



52 Records of Miracles 

introduc- for consideration ; but the consideration is now 

TION. 

open. 

30. For if miracles are neither impossible, 
nor unnatural, it follows that the records of them 
cannot be inherently incredible. But on the other 
hand in proportion as an event is rare, we are 
scrupulous in examining the evidence by which 
the truth of its occurrence is established ; and the 
more so, if the event itself is such as to be easily 
misapprehended or referred to wrong causes, or 
connected with false antecedents or consequents. 
Cases of healing, for example, except under very 
peculiar circumstances, cannot be alleged as cer- 
tainly miraculous (§ 17). Other events are un- 
equivocal in this respect. The Resurrection is 
either a miracle or it is an illusion. Here there 
is no alternative : no ambiguity. And it is not an 
accessory of the Apostolic message, but the sum 
of the message itself (pp. 5, ff.). Its unique 
character is the very point on which the first 
teachers of Christianity support all their arguments. 
It claims to be the opening of a new life to the 
world. It cannot then be rightly contemplated 
by comparing it with the events of common his- 
tory. It is, according to the original interpreta- 
tion of it, as singular in the history of the whole 
race of men as birth is in the existence of the 



not antecedently incredible. 53 



individual. In dealing with the evidence adduced introduc- 

° . . TION. 

in confirmation of such a fact, it is therefore 
necessary to take into account its relation to 
preceding and subsequent history; for it may 
well happen that the presumption in its favour 
gathered from the preparation which found its 
fulfilment in it, and from the results which 
flowed out of it, will more than counterbalance 
the natural distrust which is raised at first sight 
by its exceptional character. On a comprehensive 
survey of all nature, as far as we can judge from 
the results which are obtained by a faint approxi- 
mation to such a view, the Resurrection of our 
Lord, including, as it does, the resurrection of 
man, may be as natural as events like birth and 
death, which are accepted as natural, not because 
we can explain them in any way, but because 
the range of our experience includes the obser- 
vation of their constant recurrence. 

31. So far then we have cleared the ground 
for our inquiry. If we grant the two assumptions 
which Christianity makes as being a religion for 
man (§ 5), there is nothing antecedently impro- 
bable in the Apostolic Gospel of the Resurrection 
considered as miraculous. The same principles 
which would exclude as impossible a belief in such 
a miracle as the Resurrection, would equally ex- 



54 A belief in Miracles and the alternative. 

elude a belief in anything beyond ourselves and 
the range of present physical observation. Thus 
the question practically is not simply Is Chris- 
tianity true ? but Is all hope, impulse, knowledge, 
life, absolutely bounded by sense and the world 
of sense ? Is the present and the finite the defi- 
nite limit (not only of the mode but) of the object 
of human thought ? Is each individual person- 
ality bounded on both sides, past and future ? Is 
life as well as science of phenomena only ? Is 
there no faculty by which man can contemplate 
the temporal as (for him) a true image of the 
eternal ? Is there no fact which unites the seen 
and the unseen ? Is the spirit, as well as the 
understanding confined by present laws of obser- 
vation not only in the embodiment of ideas but in 
intuition ? Or can the soul reach forward to fuller 
forms of being, not so much future as absolute ? 
Can it, with a consciousness of its divine destiny, 
look beyond the limits of time ? Can it rejoice 
in feeling what is the glorious part which it has 
to play in the whole economy of the universe, 
and regard as its proper heritage a future appear- 
ance in the fulness of a glorified humanity before 
the presence of God ? 



CHAPTER I. 



THE RESURRECTION AND HISTORY. 

&L\o(ro(pia r/ 'EMiywK^ olov irpoKaOaipei, /cat irpoedi^et. tt}v xpvxw 
els irapadoxw ir/arews, e</>' 77 tv\v yvwaiv iiroLKodo/JLei i] dXrjdeia. 

CLEMENS ALEX. 

1. TT is the common object of all religion to chap. i. 

establish or realise a definite relation be- 
tween the worshipper and the Divine Being whom 
he approaches. Christianity goes much further 
and proposes to reveal the relation between man- 
kind, or more fully between the world and God, 
and to restore the original harmony of all crea- 
tion. It addresses not the individual only, but John i. 29. 
the race ; its effects are declared to extend not to 
man only, but to ' all things which are in heaven Eph. i. 10. 
' and which are on earth/ It is universal at the phuAiflO. 
same time as it is particular. Just as Aristotle ^ 1 ° n ^ 2 vm * 
taught that the State is prior to the Man, so Rev. v. 13. 
Christianity claims to address the World while it 
addresses the Individual or even more exactly to 



56 Life of the World. 

chap. i. address the Individual in the World. To use 
two common phrases, it contains a Philosophy of 
History, as well as a Philosophy of Salvation. 
It disregards nothing in the rich development of 
human life. It takes account alike of the evil 
and of the good. It refers to final principles — 
final, that is, for our present powers — the progress 
which we can observe in societies and nations, 
and the moral and spiritual education of men. 

2. For all creation is progressive. It is a 
law as well in the moral as in the physical world 
that nothing is lost. All that has been modifies 
all that is and all that will be. The present 
includes all the past and will itself be contained 
in the future. Each physical change, each indi- 
vidual will contributes something to the world 
to come. The earth on which we live and the 
civilisation which fashions our conduct are the 
result of immeasurable forces acting through vast 
periods of time. There are crises in the his- 
tory of nature and in the history of man, periods 
of intense and violent action and again periods 
of comparative repose and equilibrium, but still 
the continuity of life is unbroken. Even when 
the old order is violently overthrown the new 
order is built in part out of its ruins and not only 
upon them. 



Life of the World. 57 

3. The conception of a life of the universe, chap. i. 
of a general law which unites and directs the 
successive forms of all organized beings, is ne- 
cessarily of modern growth. It could not be 
formed till History had called Geology to her 
aid, and men were familiarised to some extent 
with the vast space of time covered by the records 
of the ancient world. Even now the researches of 
science are far too limited to do more than sug- 
gest the idea and mark some salient points in its 
realisation. Yet it is impossible not to feel that 
it falls in with our general notions of the working 
of God from whatever source they may be derived; 
whether they lie in the original conception of a 
Divine Being, or are suggested by what we observe 
in the noblest forms of human action. There is 
something soothing and elevating in the thought 
of a scheme of Divine government reaching through 
all time and space thus opened to our contempla- 
tion. So far from obscuring the presence of the 
Creator it enlarges and strengthens our faith in 
His operation. It enables us to distinguish be- 
tween His will as it is and our apprehension of its 
becoming. It teaches trust and hope when we are 
inclined to be dismayed at what we reckon as 
immobility or waste in the moral world. The 
sea-worn cliffs which are once again fashioned 
before our eyes into records of a new order by 



58 Life of Mankind. 

chap. i. the same power through which they were first 
built up, teach patience with a silent eloquence 
which would be irresistible if we could enter into 
its force. Surely we can afford to wait when God 
works thus slowly. 

4. The belief in a common life of mankind is 
of far older date. This is the result of intuition 
and not of science. It was the teaching of the 
prophet first and not of the philosopher. If it 
was permitted to a later generation to see the 
Matt. xxii. pledge of a personal immortality in a covenanted 
relation which God granted to the patriarchs, it 
must have been equally clear at an earlier time 
that all men who are ' the offspring of God ' were 
in some degree under His government and work- 
ing out His will. At first sight it might appear 
that the spirit of the Mosaic Law was opposed to 
this divine unity of peoples. But the opposition 
was accidental, and the Law itself was potentially 
universal in its promises. The exclusiveness of 
the Jews was something wholly different from the 
exclusiveness of the Greeks or Romans. It was 
based essentially on moral and not on political or 
social differences. It was religious and not na- 
tional. The privileges of Judaism were offered to 
him who accepted the responsibilities and claims 



Life of Mankind. 



of Judaism. The Jew was taught to look for- chap. i. 
ward to the time when all the nations of the 
earth should worship his God. The triumph to- 
wards which he was to strive, was to win fellow- 
worshippers and not to raise himself as a lord 
over enslaved peoples. Hence the later prophets 
were led to regard i the kingdoms of the world ' 
in their relation to 'the kingdom of God,' of 
which the Jewish Church was the figure and the 
seed. 

5. Something of the same notion lies in the 
Eastern representation of the successive ages of 
the world, which was borrowed by the earliest 
Greek poets, and again adopted by the writers of 
the so-called Sibylline books shortly before the 
Christian era. But the vastness of the scale on 
which this thought was moulded deprived it of 
all practical importance. When it was applied to 
human life it expressed at most the contrast 
which we find in the New Testament between 
' this age ' and ' the age to come/ Its units, so to 
speak, were periods, dispensations, as we call 
them, and not nations. It expressed a far-reach- 
ing faith in the general advance of 'the ages' 
through distress and disorder towards a glorious 
end, but it had no connexion with the progress 
or development of the ' age ' itself in which we live. 



60 Connexion of Christianity 

chap. i. 6. Still however dim and uncertain the pros- 
pect of the life of the world and the life of hu- 
manity may have been in old times, it is impos- 
sible now to doubt the noble continuity of progress 
by which both are revealed and characterised ; 
and the view which is thus opened to us of the 
course of history throws a fresh light on the posi- 
tion of Christianity. It is not an isolated system, 
but the result of a long preparation. According 
to the teaching of the Apostles, Christ came when 
all things were ready, and the measure of the 
appointed seasons was accomplished. Christianity 
cannot then be regarded alone and isolated from 
its antecedents. It is part of a whole which 
reaches back historically from its starting-point on 
the day of Pentecost for nearly two thousand 
Acts vii. years. It was new bui3 it was not unprepared. 

It professed to be itself the fulfilment and not the 
abolition of that which went before : to reveal 
outwardly the principle of a Divine Fatherhood 
by which all the contradictions and disorders of 
life are made capable of a final resolution ; and to 
possess within it that universal truth which can 
transfigure without destroying the various charac- 
teristics of men and nations. It is then possible 
that what we feel to be difficulties in its historic 
form are removed or lessened if we place it in its 
clue relation to the whole life of mankind; and, on 



with the past. 61 

the other hand, the obvious fitness with which it chap. r. 
carries on and completes a long series of former 
teachings will confirm with singular power its 
divine claims. 

7. Again: though the birth of Christianity 
was comparatively late in time, yet in fact it 
claims to have existed from the beginning as part 
of the Divine Counsel. We have seen (Intr. § 8) 
that we are obliged to regard the purposes and 
acts of God as following one another, though in 
themselves all the results of creation simply are, 
without distinction of succession. But though 
the Apostles necessarily think and speak as men, 
they expressly caution us against supposing that 
the Incarnation of the Word was in any way 
an afterthought consequent upon the Fall, and 
not already included in the Creation. Without 
touching upon the abstract truth of the absence 
of temporal limitations in the Divine Mind, they 
teach, what is in this case the practical equivalent, 
that 'before the foundation of the world' God had ^ ol ^ i *. 15 4 ff# 
foreordained the coming of Christ. The Fall iPet.i.20. 
necessarily modified the circumstances of the In- 
carnation, but the true conception of the World 
and of Humanity becomes first possible when they 
are thus regarded in their essential relation to 
the Word, the Son. We do not at present de- 



62 Connexion of Christianity 

chap. i. mand more for this statement than a recognition 
of its significance. At least it places before us 
what the first exponents of Christianity believed 
Christianity to be. It was according to their 
interpretation eternal in its essence, as well as 
universal in its application. It was in itself be- 
yond time though it was wrought out in time. 

8. It follows necessarily from this view of 
Christianity that it must be placed in intimate 
connexion with the divine discipline of the world 
in former ages if we are to understand it. As we 
cannot conceive of the world as abandoned by 
God, and as the coming of Christ is declared to 
be the complete expression of His love, Christi- 
anity must have gathered up and ratified either 
implicitly or by a direct sanction whatever men 
had truly hoped or learned of Him in earlier 
times. And this is exactly what our Lord and 
His Apostles professed to do. They came not 
to destroy but to fulfil : — to lay open and enforce 
the spiritual meaning of the Law and the Pro- 
phets, in which the Jews 'thought that they had 
'eternal life;' and to declare to the Gentiles 
the God whom they 'ignorantly worshipped.' 
They appealed to all history and to the experience 
of all men in support of the Gospel. Christ came, 
so St Paul teaches, in the fulness of time, when 



with previous History. 63 

the due measure of the appointed seasons was ac- chap, l 

complished, each of which was charged with the 

realisation of some part of the Divine Will. God 

spoke at last to us in the Person of a Son (so it Heb.i.l,2. 

is written) when He had spoken of old time to 

our fathers in the prophets, revealing His Counsel 

gradually (in many parts), as men were able to 

bear it, and variously (in many ways), as they 

could best enter into its purport. There have 

been attempts in all ages to separate Christianity 

from Judaism and Hellenism ; but to carry out 

such an attempt is not to interpret Christianity, 

but to construct a new religion. Christianity has 

not only affinities with Judaism and Hellenism, 

but it includes in itself all the permanent truths 

to which both witness. It was bound up (so the 

Apostles said) with promises and blessings by 

which the Jewish people had been moulded 

through many centuries. It answered to wants 

of which the Gentiles had become conscious 

through long periods of noble effort and bitter 

desolation. It came not at an arbitrary moment, 

but at a crisis when ' all things were now ready/ 

If it was divine in its essence, it was no less 

human in the form of its embodiment, and in the 

circumstances of its reception. 

9. Christianity was connected at its origin 



64 Christianity a 

chap. i. with a vast history — with the history of the whole 
ancient world — and it is also a history itself. It 
is a history in its fundamental form so far as it is 
a revelation ; and it is a history also in its ap- 
propriation so far as it is the informing power 
of modern society. The doctrines of Christianity 
flow from alleged facts. The belief in the historic 
event precedes the belief in the dogma. The life 
of Christ (if we may use this illustration) comes 
first, and then the teaching of the Spirit. The 
substance of our Creed lies in what Christ ivas 
and what He did, and not primarily in what He 
taught. Or, to put the same idea in another 
way, His teaching was in His Person and in His 
Life, and not in His words only or chiefly. It is 
impossible to resolve Christianity into sentiment 
or morality. The sentiment which it involves 
springs out of a historical union of man and God : 
the morality which it enforces is based on the 
reality and significance of Christ's Death and Re- 
surrection. 

10. And yet more than this. From the time 
of the first preaching of the Apostles, Christianity 
has been a power in the world acting upon society 
and acted upon by it. It conquered the Roman 
Empire, and remained unshaken by its fall. It 
sustained the shock of the northern nations, and 



History itself. 65 

in turn civilised them. It suffered persecution chap, l 
and it wielded sovereignty. It preserved the trea- 
sures of ancient thought and turned them to new 
uses. It inspired science, while it cherished 
mysteries with which science could not deal. It 
assumed the most varied forms and it moulded 
the most discordant characters. And all this was 
done and borne in virtue of its historic founda- 
tion. For its strength lay not in the zeal of a 
hierarchy who were the depositaries of hidden 
doctrines, but in the open proclamation of a 
Divine Saviour. The Cross has remained in 
every age the symbol and the monument of its 
power. 

IT. These characteristics of Christianity by 
which it is distinguished from every other religion, 
— that it is historical in its Creed and historical 
in its development, — even if they are considered 
only in their most obvious and indisputable form, 
sufficiently prove that its origin was an event 
wholly unique and unparalleled in the history of 
the world. There have been conquerors who in 
the course of a lifetime have overrun half the 
world and left lasting memorials of their progress 
in cities and kingdoms founded and overthrown. 
There have been monarchs who have by their 
individual genius consolidated vast empires and 

W. R. 5 



66 Christianity centimes in the 

chap. i. inspired them with a new life. There have been 
teachers who through a small circle of devoted 
hearers have rapidly changed the modes of thought 
of a whole generation. There have been religious 
reformers who by force or eloquence have modi- 
fied or reconstructed the belief of nations. There 
have been devotees whose lives of superhuman 
endurance have won for them from posterity a 
share of divine honour. There have been heroes 
cut off by a sudden and mysterious fate, for whose 
return their loyal and oppressed countrymen have 
looked with untiring patience as the glorious and 
certain sign of dawning freedom. There have 
been founders of new creeds who have furnished 
the ideal of supreme good to later generations 
in the glorified image of their work. But in all 
the noble line of the mighty and the wise and the 
good, in the great army of kings and prophets 
and saints and martyrs, there is not one who has 
ever claimed for himself or received from his 
followers the title of having in any way wrought 
out salvation for men by the virtue of his life and 
death, as being in themselves, and not only by 
the moral effect of their example, a spring of 
divine blessings. It is of comparatively little 
moment how and by whom the Christian religion 
was first propagated, wonderful and exceptional 
as that may seem. The one absolute mark by 



doctrine of the Person of Christ 67 

which its establishment is distinguished from that chap. i. 
of all other systems lies in its very essence. The 
Gospel differs from every message delivered as 
from God to men, in that its substance was con- 
tained in what befel a Teacher to Whom the 
Apostles had listened, in what He did and suffered. 
Christ was Himself the Word and the Truth 
which He announced. 

12. For us Christianity is so naturally iden- 
tified with abstract statements of doctrine and 
ecclesiastical institutions, that we are in danger 
of losing sight of the essentially personal basis on 
which it rests. It requires an effort to realise 
with any distinctness the sublime originality of a 
faith not in the might and goodness and love of 
a Prophet, but in the inherent power and virtue 
of the Person and Death of a Saviour. The con- 
ception of such a faith was equally novel and 
definite in the apostolic age. The relation of 
the Lord to men, viewed simply historically, was 
set forth as something wholly singular and mar- 
vellous. Within thirty years after the death of 
Christ, if we adopt the most extreme views of 
chronologers, He was habitually mentioned to- 
gether with the Father as the source of spiritual 
grace. We need only place any other name for 
a moment in the same position, if our soul does 

5—2 



68 The origin of Christianity unique, 

chap. i. not revolt from the thought, to feel what must 
have been the intuitive consciousness of a divine 
presence which enabled the Apostles to adopt 
such a formula and to consecrate it for uni- 
versal use. And the effort is comparatively easy 
for us, which for them (till it was hallowed by 
some unquestionable sanction of God) must have 
been blasphemous. We are familiarised in theory 
with the idea of God dwelling as man with 
men, but a Jew had no such belief to soften 
the awful grandeur of the truth which he ac- 
knowledged. 

13. Exactly in proportion as we apprehend 
the exceptional (but not unnatural) character of 
Christianity, we shall be better able to judge of 
all the phenomena by which (as we believe) it 
was attended. If it was — and this cannot be 
denied — wholly original in its fundamental idea, 
if it effected a revolution in the popular concep- 
tion of the relation of man to God, if it came to a 
world prepared to receive but not to create it, if 
it was bound up with a long anterior history, and 
has been in turn the life of modern nations, then 
we may expect to find that the circumstances 
which attended its origin were themselves also 
exceptional but not unnatural. The reality of the 
Resurrection is an adequate explanation of the 



and so the circumstances of its origin. 69 

significance which was attached to the Death of chap. i. 
Christ. It seems impossible to discover anything 
else which can be. 

14. Nothing, indeed, can be more unjust than 
the common mode of discussing the miracles of 
the first age. Instead of taking them in connexion 
with a crisis in the religious history of the world, 
disputants refer them to the standard of a period 
of settled progress such as that in which we live. 
The epoch at which they are said to have been 
wrought was confessedly creative in thought, and 
that in a sense in which no other age ever has 
been ; and there seems to be a positive fitness in 
the special manifestation of God at such a crisis 
in the material as in the spiritual world. The 
central idea of the time which, dimly apprehended 
at Rome and Alexandria, found its complete ex- 
pression in the teaching of the Apostles, was the 
union of earth and heaven, the transfiguration 
of our whole earthly nature ; and the history of 
ancient speculation seems to shew that nothing 
less than some outward pledge and sign of its 
truth could have led to the bold enunciation of 
this dogma as an article of popular belief. If, 
as we have seen, miracles are not in themselves 
either unnatural or incredible, in this case there 



70 Historic tests of Miracles. 

is even an antecedent presumption for their 
occurrence. 

15. It has been said, and said rightly, though 
the statement has been strangely misunderstood, 
that science can take no cognisance of miracles. 
Science deals simply with the ordinary working 
of God, with phenomena which experience shews 
to be capable of being combined in what are 
for us laws of nature. It represents the power 
according to its general action and then assumes 
it to be immutable. It cannot from its very 
nature deal with exceptions which are so rare 
as not to be capable of being grouped according 
to our present knowledge. But while miracles 
do not belong to Science, they belong to History ; 
and if they are not to be rejected without exami- 
nation, the simple question in each case when 
they are alleged is What is the evidence in their 
favour both general and special ? Is there any- 
thing in the character or work of the time which 
leads us to expect that God should reveal Him- 
self outwardly as He does inwardly ? Is there, 
that is, anything which thus makes miracles in 
some degree natural events according to the 
larger sense of the word ? And then Is the 
special evidence for the miraculous fact as clear 
as we should be content to act on in ordinary 



The Apostolic Age. 11 

cases ? This is all which we can require ; for chap. i. 
the necessary presumption against a miracle, as 
an exceptionable occurrence, is removed by an 
affirmative answer to the former question; and 
religion is essentially a practical matter, or, to 
express the same truth somewhat differently, it 
belongs to that order of subjects in which we are 
forced to trust to conclusions which fall short of 
complete certainty. 

16. The position which the apostolic age oc- 
cupies with regard to the development of ancient 
life has often been investigated. Yet even thus 
there are many points in the historic bearing of 
Christianity which are commonly neglected. It 
is true that we can see how the lines of Jewish 
and Gentile progress converge towards it. It is 
true that we can see how it satisfies instincts which 
found expression more or less vague in earlier 
times. It is true that the Gospel was preached 
first at an epoch when the organisation of society 
was more favourable to its spread than at any 
other. But this is not all ; nor indeed are these 
essentially the most important features of the 
preparation by which the Advent was preceded. 
If this were a complete statement of the case it 
might be said that Christianity was a natural pro- 
duct of the concurrence of Rome and Greece and 



72 The Apostolic Age. 

chap. i. Palestine ; that the anticipations of men after 
periods of eager expectation fashioned for them- 
selves an imaginary fulfilment : that the circum- 
stances of the age offer an explanation of the suc- 
cess of a mere creation of enthusiasm. A full 
view of the character of the preparation for the 
Gospel excludes such interpretations of its signifi- 
cance. There was a tendency towards the central 
truth of Christianity, but there was no tendency 
to produce it. Religious speculations had branched 
out in so many ways that nothing short of the 
coming of Christ could have harmonised the vari- 
ous results to which they led ; but till He came 
the results were simply conflicting and irrecon- 
cileable, and even after He came the solution 
which He brought to the riddles of earlier life 
was long misunderstood. Philosophers and moral- 
ists had variously discussed the destiny of man 
and the grounds of right and duty and knowledge, 
but the debates had ended practically in exhaus- 
tion and despair. The records of their specula- 
tions shew at once their power and their weak- 
ness : they reveal what man aspires to know and 
confess his inability to gain the knowledge for 
himself. The combinations of various nationalities 
in the Roman Empire necessarily made broader 
views of the union of men possible ; but at the 
same time the triumph of imperialism tended to 



Characteristics of Jewish History. 73 

suppress every independent power. The material chap. i. 
advantages which it offered for free intercourse 
were more than counterbalanced by the depressing 
influence of its overwhelming might. The time 
was marked by the simultaneous existence of 
countless adverse powers then first forced into 
contact, but Christianity bears no trace of any 
temporal or local character. It came as some- 
thing wholly new to a world whose course was 
already run. It belonged to no time and to no 
place. It was a beginning even more than it was 
an end. And as there are periods in the indivi- 
dual life when the exceptional becomes natural, 
it may be so with that vast and complex progress 
of humanity, which we are forced equally by 
thought and experience to regard under the form 
of a common life. 

17. The very conception of the history of 
humanity as a life, which is now an axiom with 
conflicting schools, was due (as we have already 
seen) in the first instance to the Jews. In 
spite of the exclusiveness of their national reli- 
gion they faithfully maintained the belief in a 
real unity of the human race, out of which the 
idea of a common life of humanity springs. The 
Romans had partially witnessed to the truth when 



Jewish Character 



chap. i. they acknowledged the inherent supremacy of 
Greece in art : the Stoics had taught it as part of 
their stem theory of the world ; but the Jews held 
it, however imperfectly, as lying at the very foun- 
dation of their religion. The promise to which 
they looked for the pledge of their divine election 
extended at the same time a heavenly blessing to 
all nations. The history of Israel was a continual 
advance towards the realisation of this fellowship 
of nations. Each crisis left the chosen people 
nearer to that kingdom of heaven of which they 
were the sign and the prophets. And the typical 
prophet of the Captivity looking upon the great 
powers of the world portrays them at once in 

Dan.ii.vii. their organic unity, and in the separate complete- 
ness of their distinctive energies. In this respect 
it is of no consequence how we interpret the 
visions of Daniel, or to what date we assign the 
book which bears his name. The idea of a life of 
mankind, of a law binding together different mon- 
archies and states, is there ; and from the time 
when the book became current this idea has been 
part of the heritage of men. The book of Daniel 
is (on its human side) the first philosophy of 
history, even as the book of Genesis is the pledge 
that such philosophy is possible. The one pre- 
sents the kingdoms of mankind as mutually de- 
pendent and subject to the laws of a common 



and History. 75 

development : the other presents them federally chap, l 
united in ' the first Adam.' 

18. The long continuance and varied for- 
tunes of the Jewish nation enabled it to be be- 
yond any other nation the messenger of unity and 
progress. And more than this, the purely intel- 
lectual defects with which the Semitic character 
is charged fitted the people to perform this their 
appointed work. The forms of literature which 
our western training leads us to regard as the 
highest, the Epic and the Drama, found no place 
among the Jews. The free culture of art among 
them was forbidden. Or, in other words, they 
were led to dwell upon the indeterminate and 
infinite and not upon the fixed and limited in the 
world. For them all separate histories and lives 
and embodiments of beauty were incomplete. 
They were unwilling and unable to see every- 
where one formula reproducing itself. The whole 
history of mankind was for them an Epic, a 
Tragedy — the one Epic, the one Tragedy, of 
which the fortunes of generations or families or 
men were but scattered fragments. They looked 
upon history as a life directed by will, and not as 
catastrophes ruled by destiny or phenomena pro- 
duced by law 1 . 

1 The intellectual contrast of the East and West has never 



The Discipline 



chap. i. 19. Thus it is that the work of the Jews is 
written on their character. But it is yet more 
legibly written in their history. It is difficult to 
say whether their national integrity or their 
power of assimilation is more surprising. One 
catastrophe after another overwhelmed them, and 
they rise the same yet nobler from the fire in 
which they were purified. The old spirit remain- 
ed, but it clothed itself in a new form. The 
conqueror lived in the conquered. The people 
fell beneath each of the great forms of ancient 
civilisation and received from each the choicest 
treasures which it could bestow. 

20. Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome — the 
great powers of the East and West — contributed 
to discipline the mind and further the work of 
the Jews. The hopes of the people were kindled 
by times of triumph and chastened by times of 
captivity. A theocracy, a monarchy, a hierarchy, 
brought out in succession various sides of their 
complex character and gave to it solidity and 
completeness. Meanwhile the spiritual teaching 
of the nation was carried on from stage to stage, 

been given better in a short compass than by Browning in a 
speech at the close of 'Luria,' beginning 'My own East! How 
nearer God we were ! ' to which whoever has not read it will be 
glad to be referred. 



77 



so that while nothing was lost which could serve chap. i. 
for the training of the simplest, something was 
ever added which might elevate the faith of those 
who saw deepest into the divine truth. When 
the Law, fixed and eternal, failed to satisfy all 
the wants which were called out by the manifold 
growth of a high social civilisation, the prophets 
laid open its inner meaning and drew the outlines 
of a spiritual kingdom. This new creative period 
itself came to a close, and the learned diligence 
of priests and scribes then framed out of the 
materials which it provided a system which gave 
defmiteness and consistency to the noblest belief 
of the past throughout a scattered and tributary 
people. 

21. We are often reminded that the fore- 
father of the Jews was an Arab Sheikh. Abra- 
ham, it is true, was a Sheikh, but he was much 
more. His true representative was not the Be- 
douin Esau, but Jacob, in whom lay the promise 
of a nation. The fulfilment of this promise was 
first prepared in Egypt. Without entering in 
detail into the various influences of Egypt upon 
the Jews, we may notice this the greatest of 
all : the descendants of Jacob were there bound 
together into one body by prosperity alike and 
by suffering. Every power which goes to con- 



78 The Discipline of Egypt 

chap, l solidate and unite a people was brought to bear 
upon them. The recollection of a noble descent, 
the consciousness of a high destiny, the presence 
of a hostile nation, common occupations, practical 
isolation in life and worship, combined to create 
and keep alive a feeling of fellowship and mutual 
dependence among the growing host. The sense 
of unity and nationality may have been degraded, 
though it could not be destroyed, by the con- 
ditions of ancient slavery. And thus in due time 
a people was prepared for a sterner discipline and 
a sterner work. It is impossible as yet to deter- 
mine exactly how far the form of the religion of 
Israel was modified by Egyptian influences. But 
the silence of the Pentateuch as to the future life M 
shews that a power immeasurably stronger than 
custom limited the character of such a depend- 
ence. That which is most conspicuous in the faith 
of Egypt is wholly wanting in the teaching of 
Moses. The earth and the present had to be 
felt in their full meaning. For it is only by 
looking both backward and forward that the 
circumstances of the Exodus can be seen in 
their true light. When the multitude had rea- 
lised their common helplessness at last the voice 
of the God of their fathers quickened again the 
true life of the children of Abraham ; and the 
faith which was called out by the sight of terrible 



The Discipline of Sinai. 79 

judgments on their enemies, was deepened with chap. i. 
awful intensity by a lonely sojourn in the wil- 
derness in the very presence of the Loed their 
Saviour. 

22. The Jews left Egypt a host of fugitives : 
they entered the promised land a conquering 
army. But an entire lifetime lay between the 
two events. A new generation grew up in the 
wilderness to whom the Loed revealed Himself 
as King. Henceforth the people never wholly 
forgot their divine allegiance. They were the 
people of the Loed even when they most fatally 
misinterpreted the meaning of their title. The 
majesty of Sinai rests on the whole of their later 
history. The sense of a personal relation of each 
Jew to his God gave strength to the nation 
and dignity to the citizen. Moses made use, 
we must believe, of 'the wisdom of the Egyp- 
f tians/ of their skill in science, in art, in organi- 
sation, even in sacred symbolism; but the con- 
stitution which he framed was infinitely nobler 
than that of Egypt. It was based on the word 
of God addressed to all: it was free from the 
degradation of caste: it included the possibility 
of progress. Egypt made the body of the nation, 
so to speak; Sinai infused into it its spirit. 
Egypt united the race : Sinai inspired each man 



80 Discipline of the period of the Judges. 

chap, l with the consciousness of his own direct covenant 
with the Lord who had redeemed His people- 
Each individual life, in all its parts, no less than 
the life of the nation, was consecrated to God. 
To realise the kingdom of heaven — the perfect 
Sovereignty of the Lord among men — was from 
this time the acknowledged mission of the Jew, 

23. After the conquests of Joshua and the 
first settlement of the tribes followed times of 
disruption and disaster. The nation was not yet 
disciplined sufficiently by common trials to trust 
in an unseen Power. Hitherto heroic leaders 
had represented to them the personality of the 
Theocracy, and momentous crises had called out 
their utmost energy. But all was changed when 
they once entered on their inheritance. In times 
of distress they still remembered that God was 
their king: but they forgot Him in times of peace. 
The lessons of the wilderness were not at once 
applicable to the course of common life. The 
people acknowledged a spiritual deliverer, but 
they were not ripe for a spiritual sovereignty. 
This was indeed the end of their hopes, but the 
time was not yet. To lead them to look on- 
ward, to reveal the inherent weakness of dominion 
based on external might, even though the might 
was from God, to prepare the way for another and 



The Discipline of the Kingdom. 81 

more gradual training, based upon the character- chap. i. 
istic feelings of the nation — in respect of this 
progressive development the type of all nations — 
was, as it appears, the use of the troubled period of 
the J udges. The free uncentralised government, 
and the moveable Tabernacle, shewed by no un- 
certain symbols the nature of the kingdom which 
God designed for His people : arbitrary authority 
and unhallowed sanctuaries shewed that they 
were not yet prepared to submit to its sway. The 
idea of the Theocracy, if the phrase may be al- 
lowed, was presented at the outset of the national 
life ; and experience proved that it could only be 
realised by a long season of discipline. 

24. Thus the establishment of the kingdom 
was in the truest sense a defection from God, and 
yet, humanly speaking, it was a necessary de- 
fection. An earthly king fell infinitely short of 
the type of divine government represented by 
Moses, or J oshua, or Samuel ; but he was at once 
a definite centre and a clear sign of something 
greater than himself. If he presented the spiritual 
idea in a fixed and limited form, he also gave 
distinctness to the conception of the present 
moral sovereignty of God, and furnished imagery 
under w T hich the prophets could construct a more 
glorious picture of the future. 

W, R. 6 



82 The Discipline of the Kingdom. 

chap. i. 25. The establishment of the kingdom was 
necessarily connected with the building of the 
Temple. And the Temple occupied the same 
place with regard to the Tabernacle as the mon- 
archy with regard to the Theocracy. Both were 
earthly and partial, though at the time necessary, 
representatives of something greater and more 
spiritual. In both we see the attempt to give a 
limited and permanent shape to that which was, 
in its original revelation, divine in essence and 
transitory in its embodiment. But even as God 
was pleased to use the monarchy for the exhibition 
of higher truth, so also He used the Temple ; and 
we cannot see now how the lessons conveyed 
through it to the Jews and to ourselves could 
otherwise have been realised. 

26. The kingdom and the Temple were de- 
stroyed when they had fixed indelibly upon the 
heart of the nation the idea of the unity of the 
sovereignty and worship of God which they 
symbolised. The Captivity then spiritualised by 
the teaching of facts, as the prophets by word 
of mouth, the lessons which had been taught in 
a material form. The people came up from Egypt 
a united nation : they returned from Babylon a 
small colony to form the centre of a religious 
commonwealth. A great revolution had been 



The Discipline of the Captivity. 83 

wrought in their national hopes, in their social chap. i. 
organisation, in their spiritual creed. They were 
no longer outwardly bound together by civil ties. 
Subject to different monarchs, they even served 
in adverse armies. Their hereditary sovereignty 
was lost. But political separation did not destroy 
true fellowship. The unity of a church succeeded 
to the unity of a nation ; and the scattered 
members of the religious society looked forward 
in common to the eternal kingdom of a future 
Son of David. At the same time the service of 
the synagogues was added to that of the Temple. 
A hierarchy whose power was derived from edu- 
cation and not from descent, grew up, and more 
than rivalled the power of the priests. The 
labour of these scribes witnessed to the cessation 
of prophecy, and jealously guarded the heritage 
which it had left. As a necessary consequence 
religion assumed a more distinctly personal cha- 
racter. The house of prayer and the skilled 
teacher brought it close to the home of each Jew. 
Exile had taught men, when they were removed 
from their holy place, the full blessing of spiritual 
communion with God. In the strength of this 
faith they were allowed to gaze upon the con- 
flicts of good and evil in a higher world ; and the 
enemy of God was seen at length in his personal Zech.iii.l. 
power. 

6—2 



84 The Discipline of the Dispersion. 

chap. i. 27. Thus Persia wrought out its work upon 
the Jews, and when the discipline was ended the 
people were prepared to meet the new influences 
of Greece. The most abiding monument of the 
triumphs of Alexander was the city which he 
chose to bear his name in the border land of 
the East and West ; and the spirit of Alexandria 
nowhere found a truer expression than in the 
Jewish colony which from the first formed an 
important element in its population. The Alex- 
andrine Jews penetrated deeply into the specula- 
tions of Greek philosophy, and their national faith 
gained breadth without losing its individuality. 
Nor was the influence of Greece upon Judaism, 
which was strong at Alexandria, confined to that 
centre. It was spread from the first more or less 
throughout Asia Minor and Syria. The policy 
of conquerors and the instinct of commerce scat- 
tered the Jews over the whole civilised world. 
The dispersion, which was begun on the return 
from Babylon, was extended. Judaism adopted 
a new language for its ancient doctrines. A people 
who had once been bound by the strictest ritual- 
ism within the narrow limits of one land were 
found throughout all nations witnessing to the 
spiritual truths which they had inherited and 
preparing the way for a universal faith. The 
Hellenists were thus at once missionaries and 



The Growth of the Doctrine of Messiah. 85 

prophets. They proclaimed a purer creed to chap. i. 
the heathen, who gathered round the synagogue 
without formally taking upon themselves the 
covenant of Israel; and they lifted the thoughts 
of their countrymen to the prospect of a spiritual 
law circumscribed by no requirements of season 
or place. 

28. One special feature of the growth of 
Hellenism among the Jews demands a passing 
notice. The spirit of independent thought led to 
the foundation of sects. The conflicting tendencies 
which coexist everywhere in religious societies 
found separate embodiments. Freedom, ritualism 
and asceticism found a characteristic expression 
in Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes. The whole 
breadth and depth of the national faith, so to 
speak, was tested. Nor was a fiery trial wanting 
when the elements of truth and error were in 
danger of being fatally confounded. The Macca- 
bsean conflict restored the Law to its true supre- 
macy while it left untouched all that was nobler 
in the lessons of Greek art and culture. A final 
struggle fixed the limits of the teaching of the 
ancient prophets, and founded the stability of 
the nation on the victorious profession of its 
completed faith. 



86 The Doctrine of Messiah. 

chap. r. 29. Meanwhile through these vicissitudes of 
disaster and triumph one faith grew in many 
fashions and in many parts. The Jews never 
lost the sense of the blessing which was to 
come through them to all the nations. Up to 
the giving of the Law no personal trait of the 
promised Redeemer is found. Hope was centred 
in a narrower circle at each great crisis in the 
spiritual history of mankind, in a race, in a nation, 
in a tribe, in a family. For the first time the work 
of Moses furnished occasion to a special portraiture 
of Messiah's office. He was to be the mediator of 
a new Law. To establish an abiding covenant 
between God and man was declared to be the 
substance of His work. The Law alone was un- 
able to train the Jews to their appointed work. 
A kingdom was established, and with it a new con- 
ception of Messiah was added. The king who gave 
unity and security to the nation was but a type of 
the Son of David whose kingdom should extend 
in eternal blessings over all the world. The 
earthly sovereignty of the line of David fell, The 
chosen people passed into captivity, and under 
the pressure of national disaster learnt from the 
teaching of prophets to see in their promised 
Messiah f a Son of Man/ who should sympathise 
with the sufferings of those whom He came to save 
as well as to govern. Thus the central belief, in 



The Doctrine of Messiah. 87 

virtue of which Judaism lived, was providentially chap. i. 
shaped in the progress of the history of the chosen 
people. Nothing was lost as the conception of 
the Redeemer was gradually completed. Each 
period added something which belongs essentially 
to the fulness of the conception. And so at last 
the Lawgiver, the King, the Prophet, the Priest, 
the Man, are all included in the Christ whom the 
Gospels present to us. 

30. Two characteristic doctrines which be- 
longed in their completest forms respectively to 
Palestine and Alexandria summed up this na- 
tional belief at the time of the Lord's Coming. 
The expectation of a Messiah 1 who should redeem 
' Israel,' and the belief in a Divine Word by whom 
God could reveal Himself to mankind at large. 
The first hope found expression in a series of 
so-called apocryphal writings which generally 
agree in describing a period of intense suffering, 
followed by the advent of a triumphant Con- 
queror, who should bring beneath his sceptre 
and the Law all the nations of the earth. The 
process of the consummation is variously pictured 
according to the position in which the several 
writers stood. At one time an era of blessing, at 
another an era of vengeance fills the imagination 
of the seer. But the earth is the scene of both. 



88 The Doctrine of Messiah. 

chap. i. The purification of the soul through suffering, the 
end of the great tragedy of human life, finds no 
fitting place in the schemes of outward aggrand- 
isement. 'The master of Israel' was startled 
at the seeming paradox of a second birth. In 
proportion as the teaching of the prophets was 
made more definite, its traits were exaggerated 
and externalised. But in spite of error and 
prejudice the hope of the Palestinian Jew was in 
a Person, a Saviour. The deliverance for which 
he confidently looked was to be wrought out 
among men. It was to be historical in its 
foundation and not moral only or intellectual. 
He through whom it should be accomplished 
was recognised as 'the Son of God,' but none 
the less its end was to be the restoration of the 
kingdom. 

31. At the same time while this external 
conception of Messiah was gaining definiteness 
and strength, wider views of the general action 
of God were gradually opened. Religious think- 
ers, especially in Egypt, pondered on the way in 
which we may conceive an Infinite Being in con- 
nexion with the finite. The result was a wide- 
spread doctrine of a Divine Word through whom 
God was supposed to be revealed in action and in 
utterance. In Palestine this Word was regarded 



The Doctrine of the Word. 89 

chiefly as the medium of outward communication, chap. i. 

like the angel of the Pentateuch : at Alexandria 

as the power in virtue of which a fellowship 

between God and man is rendered possible. The 

one doctrine tended towards the recognition of a 

divine Person subordinate to God : the other to 

the recognition of a twofold personality in the 

divine nature. In Greek writers, like Philo, the 

conception of the Word was further enlarged by 

the ambiguity of the term Logos, which was used 

to express it. As this might be taken for ' Word ' 

or 1 Reason/ so the corresponding idea fluctuated 

between the objective manifestation of the Divine 

will and the subjective correlative, whether in the 

mind of God in which the primal thought lay, 

or in the mind of man by which he apprehends 

the revelation. Each varying notion has obvious 

points of connexion with Christian dogma, and 

just as the Jewish belief in Messiah preserved 

the belief in a historic Saviour, so the Jewish 

belief in the Word prepared the way for a larger 

view of a revelation of God in man and through 

man. 

32. The two complementary conceptions of 
a Saviour manifested on earth and of an eternal 
omnipresent Word thus existed side by side, but 
they were absolutely unconnected. Philo may 



90 The Preparation of the Gentile tuorld. 

chap. i. have conceived of the Word as acting through 
Messiah, but not as one with Him. The lines of 
thought which pointed to the action of a second 
Person in the Godhead, and to the victories of 
some future conqueror, were not even parallel but 
divergent. It was reserved for St John to unite 
the antithetic truths in one divine phrase, which 
could not have entered into the mind of Philo. 
Johni. 'The Word was God,... and the Word was made 

1—14. 

' flesh, and dwelt among us.' 

33. But the preparation of Judaism was not 
the only preparation for Christianity. In another 
sense the Gentile world were making all things 
ready for the advent. The vast monarchies of 
the East, the intellectual culture of Greece, the 
civil organisation of Rome, each fitted men in 
some peculiar way for the reception of the message 
of the Gospel. The spirit of the East made itself 
felt directly through the Jewish nation while 
prophets yet spoke to interpret its lessons. The 
teaching of Greece was reflected more or less 
clearly in the common version of the Sacred 
Books and in the speculations of an influential 
school of Jewish teachers, both in Palestine and 
in the Dispersion. The material unity and order 
of the Roman Empire prepared the way for the 
spread of a new Faith and furnished the type of 



The Development of Greek life. 91 

a universal kingdom. But it is not our purpose chap. i. 
now to consider the relative effects of Greece or 
Rome on Judaism or Christianity, but rather to 
estimate generally what ancient life in its noblest 
forms was in itself as a step in the progress of 
humanity. 

34. Something, indeed, has been said already 
of the direct influence of Greece upon Jewish 
development. But the independent progress of 
classical thought and life had in itself, though 
indirectly, a more important bearing on the con- 
summation of the crisis of human life at the time 
when Christ came. In a word, it may be said 
that the history of the ancient world is generally 
the history of the gradual separation of man from 
God, so far as the original relation was the ground- 
work of faith and personal devotion. At the same 
time the civil power was more and more central- 
ised and offered as the object towards which the 
highest hopes of the citizen might be directed. 
The standards which bore the image of the 
Emperor became the idols of the Roman army ; 
and in its essence the idea of Imperialism is the 
human antithesis to the Homeric sovereignty of 
Zeus. It would be easy to trace out the necessary 
progress of this elimination of the heavenly, 
externally religious, element from Gentile life in 



92 The Development of Greek life. 

chap. i. society, literature, and thought. The instinct from 
which this element derived its origin and strength 
could not bear a rigid analysis, nor meet the mani- 
fold difficulties of a complex polity. Step by step 
the patriarchal communities, in which the ruler and 
the priest were one, passed into the great republics, 
where a solemn ceremonial witnessed to a feeling 
of religion, powerful only as an instrument to rule 
the masses. A single century, but that a century 
which ranks in the richness and variety of its 
mental results only after the first and sixteenth, 
saw the passage from the pious theocratic history 
of Herodotus to the self-reliant, human analysis of 
national fortunes in Thucydides; from the awful 
questionings on fate and foreknowledge and future 
punishment in iEschylus, which sound like echoes 
of a Hebrew prophet, to the intellectual natural- 
ism of Euripides; from the rude choric song, in 
which still lingered some sense of the personal 
bounty of a God of gladness, to the conventional 
portraiture of an artificial life in the comedies 
of Menander. The advance of philosophy was 
scarcely less rapid. The discussions on being 
which occupied the earliest thinkers, passed into 
discussions on knowing. Aristotle sums up the 
results of all who had gone before him with stern 
impartiality, and a school of scepticism followed. 
Thenceforth philosophy was content to treat of 



The Development of Roman life. 93 

duty and to abdicate the higher prerogatives 
which it had once claimed. 

35. The growth of the Roman Empire is the 
noblest spectacle of the natural triumph of human 
power, as it was based upon the surest of human 
affections. But like Greek philosophy the Roman 
constitution contained essentially in itself the 
seeds of its own ruin. The conception of the 
family bound together by a common worship on 
which the state was built was unequal to meet 
the difficulties of enlarged dominion. First arose 
the divisions in the capital itself when the pater- 
nal authority of those who had been once fathers 
in act as well as in name was unable to satisfy the 
wants of the multitude who had placed themselves 
under their protection. Next the policy of iso- 
lation and civil independence, by which the early 
republic had sought to keep in contented loyalty 
her subject states, was inapplicable to the wider 
dominion of later times. The idea of the family 
and with it that of religion was lost; and when 
Rome had conquered the world, it was felt on 
every side that one irresponsible will could alone 
wield the resources of the state. The soul was 
gone when the body had reached its full develop- 
ment. Yet even thus the influence of Rome upon 
Christianity was not less than that of Greece. If 



94 The Development of Roman life, 

chap, l the speculations of Greek thinkers had raised 
problems and fashioned a language which could 
aid Christian teachers in unfolding the doctrine of 
the Divine Nature, the determinations of Roman 
jurists were equally powerful in preparing for the 
exhibition of the relation of man to God, which 
was the office of the Latin Church. But this work 
was still future and unperceived. For the pre- 
sent even the splendours of the reign of Augustus 
were a sign of failure. Greek speculation had 
ended in scepticism. The constitutional liberty 
of Rome had issued in Imperialism. The pro- 
mise which the Jew had inherited from his fathers 
alone waited for an accomplishment, which each 
change seemed to bring nearer. 

36. Thus the fulness and the exhaustion of 
hope met at the epoch of Christ's coming. The 
hope of an external deliverance which had been 
gradually moulded through a long history was 
waiting its fulfilment. The hope which man had 
formed of working out his own way to truth and 
freedom was wellnigh quenched. Old forms of 
belief, old modes of government, were passing 
away. It was felt that ' the world's great age' was 
even then to begin anew. Carried away by this 
belief, Romans saw in the rise of Imperialism the 
promise of a Golden Age. But the imagery of 



Revealed Religion progressive. 



the Augustan poet, who described the advent of chap. i. 
this glorious time, was borrowed from the East, 
and it was to the East that many still looked for 
the great Conqueror. So firm and so widespread 
was this expectation that nearly seventy years 
afterwards Vespasian was thought to have ful- 
filled the prophecy by passing from Syria to the 
throne of the Caesars. It is needless however to 
dwell upon this instinctive homage of the age to' 
the Lord whom it knew not. It may have been 
a mere echo of Jewish hopes, or one of those 
intuitive interpretations of a great crisis which 
seem to rise simultaneously in the hearts of na- 
tions. So much at least is clear to us now, that 
the Coming of Christ coincided with the beginning 
of a new life in mankind, with a new development 
of history which is not yet completed; and, yet 
more than this, that the principles of this life are 
found in their simplest form in the Gospels. 

37. Judaism had existed in the face of every 
form of antagonistic religion, but it had not sub- 
dued them. It had the power of life, but not the 
power of conquest. The life of Christianity lay 
in progress. It was essentially aggressive and es- 
sentially human. Christ was the Son of Man as 
well as the Son of David. And thus through the 
Apostles first all the treasures of the East were 



96 Religion progressive. 

chap, l brought to the Western nations in a form which 
they could appreciate and accept. The strength 
of modern civilisation lies in the combination of 
faith and reason — to use the shortest phrase — 
which was the issue of their message. The power 
of their Gospel was felt far beyond the range of 
its acknowledged influence. The old philosophies 
were quickened with a new life. Christianity had 
revealed the seat of their weakness, and enthusi- 
astic teachers endeavoured to supply what was 
wanting in them. Classical paganism itself was 
made to assume a new dress, and the bitterest 
enemy of the faith acknowledged its inherent 
power by a vain endeavour to transfer its spirit 
to the polytheistic creed. 

38. These considerations suggest a conclusive 
answer to a fallacy which has come to be regarded 
as a truism. It is said that while science is pro- 
gressive religion is stationary. The modes of ad- 
vance in the two are certainly not the same, but 
the advance in science is not more real than the 
advance in religion. Each proceeds according to 
its proper law. The advance in religion is not 
measured by an addition to a former state, which 
can be regarded in its fulness separately, but by 
a change : it is represented not by a common dif- 
ference but by a common ratio. Viewed in this 



Religion progressive. 97 

light, we can trace on a great scale the triple chap. i. 
division of post-Christian history as marked by 
the successive victories of the Faith. The fact . 
of the Resurrection is its starting-point, the real- 
isation of the Resurrection is its goal. The ful- 
ness of the Truth is once shewn to men, as in 
old times the awful splendours of the Theocracy, 
and then they are charged to work out in the 
slow struggles of life the ideal which they have 
been permitted to contemplate. Thus it is that 
we can look without doubt or misgiving upon 
the imperfections of the sub-apostolic Church or 
the corruptions of the middle ages or the excesses 
of the Reformation. Even through these the 
divine work went forward. The power of the 
Resurrection was ever carried over a wider field. 
At first Christianity moved in the family, hallow- 
ing every simplest relation of life. This was the 
work of the primitive Church. Next it extended 
its sway to the nation and the community, claim- 
ing to be heard in the assemblies of princes and 
in the halls of counsellors. This was the work of 
the medieval Church. Now it has a still wider 
mission, to assert the common rights and fellow- 
ship of men, to rise from the family and the nation 
to humanity itself. To accomplish this is the 
charge which is entrusted to the Church of the 
Present ; and no vision of the purity or grandeur 
w. r. 7 



98 The Greek Period: Orthodox. 

chap. i. of earlier times should blind us to the supreme 
majesty of the part which is assigned to us in 
the economy of faith. 

39. It is at once obvious that these great 
divisions of Christian history, or even more truly 
speaking of the post-Christian world, answer in a 
remarkable degree to the periods of Jewish his- 
tory which have been already marked out. The 
law of progress is the same in both. But if his- 
tory repeats itself, it is, at least in this case, on 
an ampler field and with more momentous issues. 
The discipline of a nation is replaced by the dis- 
cipline of a world ; and (as we believe) an Advent 
of Triumph answers to an Advent of Redemp- 
tion. Without following out this parallel further, 
though it seems to include many unexpected har- 
monies in things old and new, we must yet notice 
a progress in Christianity itself corresponding 
with this progress in its work. The three words 
which by common consent characterise the great 
representative Churches of 'the different periods 
describe the successive stages into which it 
may be divided, Orthodoxy, Catholicity, Evangeli- 
calism. 

40. At first the Christian Faith was simply 
historic. As long as its work was confined in the 



The Greek Period: Orthodox. 99 



narrow limits of the family or of the small commu- chap. i. 
nities scattered throughout the Empire, consider- 
able latitude in interpreting the fundamental 
facts on which it rested was natural or even ne- 
cessary. The principles of Truth were held firm, 
but no deductions from them were authorised. 
The rapid spread of Christianity through every 
rank made this state of things impossible for 
any great length of time. Philosophers became 
Apologists and reasoned in turn upon the truths 
which they defended. Yet even thus heresy was 
long active in every direction laying down false 
conclusions before the Church assumed the peril- 
ous function of denning the Truth. But the 
work was done by those who by natural gifts 
and intellectual training were best fitted for its 
accomplishment. It was the glory of the Greek 
Church to win the title of Orthodox. But the 
work of the Orthodox Church though necessary 
was full of danger. There is a strange fascination 
in reasoning on mysteries. As the argument pro- 
ceeds men are unwilling to limit their conclu- 
sions, and they end too often by measuring Being 
by our conceptions of it. But yet more than 
this: doctrine itself is external to us. There is 
no right doctrine which ought not to affect con- 
duct, but as doctrine it has no necessary effect 
on life : no conquering or transforming power. 

7—2 



100 The Roman Period: Catholic. 

chap. i. The effects of a predominantly speculative study 
of Christianity were seen before long in the cha- 
racter and fortunes of the Eastern Communion. 
The Orthodox Church is the least inclined of all 
churches to missionary work. Its part hitherto, 
since its first great triumphs, has been that of a 
witness rather than that of a herald. It could 
hardly have been otherwise. Orthodoxy as such 
is the translation of facts into a dialectic form ; 
but the life, the power of assimilation and expan- 
sion, remains in the facts. Unhappily the Greek 
Church from the time when its original mission 
was fulfilled was united with Imperialism. Its 
potential dangers were thus realised, and Mo- 
hammedanism conquered the East. It has been 
said that the Byzantine Empire died of Chris- 
tianity : it would be more just to say that the 
Byzantine Empire sought to imperialise Chris- 
tianity and perished in the attempt, for Greek 
Christianity was strong enough only to rescue 
itself and not the State from the ruins of the 
judgment which followed. 

. 41. But meanwhile a greater Church had 
risen. When Constantine transferred the dignity 
of Empire to his new capital he was unable to 
bear away to Byzantium the ancient glory and 
name of Rome. The majesty which had grown 



The Roman Period: Catholic. 101 

round the city during a thousand years remained chap. i. 
undisturbed as the prize of the power which 
should prove worthy to claim it. And the Roman 
Church was alone able to bear the weight of 
sovereignty, for she alone had life amidst the 
shadows which lingered round the ancient seats 
of honour. From the first, if we can interpret 
rightly its fragmentary records, the Roman Church 
had adopted something of the policy of the 
Roman State. It had regarded ecclesiastical 
problems from the point of view of society. Its 
characteristic was breadth rather than precision. 
In proportion as it embodied more and more 
openly the style and power of the Caesars, Ca- 
tholicity became more conspicuously its ruling 
principle. Its aim was to incorporate rather than 
to assimilate the people who were brought under 
its control. The Republic received the gods of 
conquered nations within its Pantheon, and the 
Church accepted under new titles such popular 
beliefs and superstitions as could be fitly clothed 
in a Christian dress. The policy of the Roman 
Church was to deal with society as it was, and 
not to rebuild it again from its simplest elements. 
Thus equally from its position and from its in- 
herent character it became a sovereign power. 
At Constantinople the attempt was made to im- 
perialise the Church : at Rome the Church became 



102 The Evangelical Period. 

chap. i. an Empire. The transformation was subservient 
if not essential to the fulfilment of its work. By 
the glory of its name and the strength of its 
organisation it conquered the northern tribes and 
preserved the treasures of ancient civilisation 
for a higher use. At the same time it presented 
the noble spectacle of a universal spiritual power 
side by side with the temporal power, and inde- 
pendent of it. In these respects its function with 
regard to discipline was as needful as that of the 
Greek Church with regard to Truth. But the 
traditional policy which was its strength prepared 
the way for its corruption. When the Church 
became nobler outwardly, it engrossed more com- 
pletely the devotion of its members, and con- 
versely it became more dependent on popular 
opinion. At last the Christian was in danger of 
losing his sense of a personal connexion with 
Christ; and the simplicity of Truth was hidden 
beneath the accretions of centuries. The spirit 
of Northern Europe, which had never been com- 
pletely Romanised, had in the meantime gained 
maturity, and claimed, in the full consciousness of 
life to hold communion with God face to face. 

42. Thus a third development of the Church 
began corresponding to a new period of life ; but 
it differed from those which preceded by the fact 



The successive periods mark an advance. 103 

that it was manifold and not one. It was essen- chap. i. 
tially the expression of individual faith and not 
of common belief. Its ecclesiastical forms fol- 
lowed from the concurrence of private convictions, 
and did not underlie and mould the societies 
which arose. Its strength lay in the confident 
affirmation of two great principles, that the Chris- 
tian is continuously in direct spiritual intercourse 
with God through Christ, and that he is throughout 
continuously responsible to Him for his judgment 
in divine matters. Personal vitality was infused 
into religion. Faith claimed the homage of free 
reason. Individuality was added to Catholicism. 

43. It would be easy to point out the weak- 
ness of the Reformation in itself as a power of 
organisation. Its function was to quicken rather 
than to create, to vivify old forms rather than to 
establish new. But however we may grieve over 
its failure where it arrogated the office not of re- 
storation but of reconstruction, it was a distinct 
advance in Christian life. Where it failed, it failed 
from the neglect of the infirmities of man and 
of the provisions which have been divinely made, 
to meet them. On the other hand, the lessons 
which it taught are still fruitful throughout 
Christendom, and destined, as we hope, to bring 
forth a still more glorious harvest. What that 



104 The successive periods 

chap. i. may be we cannot as yet know, but all past 
history teaches us that the power of the Gospel 
is able to meet each crisis of human progress, 
and we can look forward with trust to the fulfil- 
ment of its message to our age. The advance 
towards that perfection of Christian fellowship 
which we can all imagine, and to look forward to 
which is our noblest hope, may be slow, but it is 
slow only in the same sense in which the life of 
nations is slow. Generations are the days by 
which it is measured, but in the end it will not 

Matt. xiii. fail. The parables of nature are fulfilled in the 

Mark iv. history of the Church. 

26—29. 

44. The student of history will readily see 
that the great forms of Christian progress which 
have been marked out correspond in a remarkable 
manner with other great periods in art and litera- 
ture and science. The divisions are neither arbi- 
trary nor applicable only to some parts of human 
life. The final result of each was a permanent 
advance, and the power by which each was ani- 
mated was drawn from the Gospel. If the fact 
of the Resurrection be in itself, as it confessedly 
is, absolutely unique in all human experience, the 
point which it occupies in history is absolutely 
unique also. To this point all former history 
converges as to a certain goal : from this point all 



mark an advance. 



105 



subsequent history flows as from its life-giving chap. i. 
spring 1 . If the Resurrection were alleged to 
have occurred abruptly in the middle of a series of 
events which passed on slowly to their consumma- 
tion unaffected by its interruption ; if it stood in 
no definite relation to the past, as in some sense a 
solution of the riddle which had baffled exhausted 
nations : if its significance had not been witnessed 
to at once by the rise of a new and invincible 
power which fashioned the development of all 
aftertime : then we might have paused in doubt 
before so stupendous a miracle, and pleaded the 
uniformity of nature against the claims of such an 
event upon our belief. But now the testimony of 
nature itself is in favour of the fact. We form 
our notions of a result from what we know of the 

1 Tert. de Virg. Vel. i. Nihil sine setate est : omnia tempus 
expectant.... Aspice ipsam creaturam paulatim ad fructumpro- 
moveri. Granum est primo, et de grano f rut ex oritur, et de 
frutice arbuscula enititur. Deinde rami et frondes invalescunt, 
et totum arboris nomen expanditur : inde germinis tumor, et 
flos de germine solvitur, et de flore fructus aperitur. Is quoque 
rudis aliquamdiu et informis paulatim setatem suam dirigens 
eruditur in mansuetudinem saporis. Sic et justitia (nam idem 
Deus justitiae et creaturse) primo fuit in rudimentis, natura 
Deum metuens. Dehinc per legem et prophetas promovit in 
infantiam. Dehinc per evangelium efferbuit in juventutem. 
Nunc (the words admit a Catholic interpretation) per Paracletum 
componitur in maturitatem. . . I should despair of rendering the 
words adequately into English. As a master of rhetorical lan- 
guage the ' barbarian ' Tertullian has few rivals. 



106 



The Special Evidence 



chap. i. conditions under which the forces act, no less 
than from what we know of the forces themselves. 
If the force is the same we are sure that it must 
act differently under varied circumstances. If 
the circumstances are absolutely singular in all 
experience we conclude that an event will occur 
without a parallel. If a long train of occurrences 
before and after lead us to expect that the event 
would be of some specific kind, then its singu- 
larity is an argument in favour of its credibility 
and not against it. On a large view of the life of 
humanity the Resurrection is antecedently likely. 
So far from being beset by greater difficulties 
than any other historical fact, it is the one fact 
towards which the greatest number of lines of 
evidence converge. In one form or other pre- 
Christian history is a prophecy of it and post- 
Christian history an embodiment of it. 

45. If we next turn to consider the direct 
evidence for the Resurrection, we shall find in it 
several elements of singular force. These are the 
more deserving of attention, because the narrative 
of the event itself in the Gospels, is in no wise 
distinguished from the narrative of any other or- 
dinary fact which they record. The Evangelists 
treat the Resurrection as simply, unaffectedly, 
inartificially, as everything else which they touch. 



for the Resurrection. 107 

The miracle to them seems to form a natural part chap. i. 
of the Lord s history. They shew no conscious- 
ness that it needs greater or fuller authentication 
than the other events of His life. Their position 
and office indeed excluded such a thought. They 
wrote not to create belief but to inform those who 
already believed. A knowledge of the chief events 
in the Lord's ministry, including the Resurrec- 
tion, and a general conviction of their reality 
and significance, is everywhere assumed in the 
Apostolic writings. The existence of a Christian 
society is the first and (if rightly viewed) the 
final proof of the historic truth of the miracle on 
which it was founded (§§ 49, 50). It may indeed 
be said that the Church was founded upon the 
belief in the Resurrection, and not upon the 
Resurrection itself: and that the testimony must 
therefore be limited to the attestation of the be- 
lief, and cannot reach to the attestation of the 
fact. But belief expressed in action is for the 
most part the strongest evidence which we can 
have of any historic event. Unless therefore it 
can be shewn that the origin of the Apostolic 
belief in the Resurrection, with due regard to 
the fulness of its characteristic form, and the 
breadth and rapidity of its propagation, can be 
satisfactorily explained on other grounds, the be- 
lief itself is a sufficient proof of the fact. We 



The witness 



chap. i. shall be in a position to consider whether such an 
explanation is possible when we have examined 
the form in which the outward record of the 
belief has come down to us. 

46. The letters of St Paul are amongst the 
earliest, if not actually the earliest writings in the 
New Testament. Of these one important group 
has been recognised as certainly genuine even- 
by the most sceptical critics. No one doubts that 
the Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, and 
Romans were composed by St Paul, and addressed 
to the Churches whose name they bear. Nor is 
there much uncertainty as to the date at which 
they were written. The most extreme opinions 
fix them between A.D. 52 — 59, that is under no 
circumstances more than thirty years after the 
Lord's death (a.d. 30 — 33). There can then be 
no doubt as to the authority of their evidence as 
expressing the received opinion of Christians at 
this date, and there can be no doubt as to the 
opinion itself. In each of the Epistles the literal 
fact of the Resurrection is the implied or ac- 
knowledged groundwork of the Apostle's teaching. 
Eom. iv. The very designation of God is f He who raised 
&c. Vm 1X ' ' U P ^ ne Lord from the dead/ In this miracle lay 
the sum of the new revelation, the sign of Christ's 
Sonship. To believe this fact and confess it was 



of St Paul 109 

the pledge of salvation. On many points there chap. i. 
was a diversity of judgment among the Apostles, 
and a wider discrepancy of belief among their 
professed followers, but on this there is no trace 
of disagreement. Some, indeed, questioned the 
reality of our own resurrection, but they were 
met by arguments based on the Resurrection of 
Christ which they acknowledged. Whatever else 
was doubted this one event was beyond dispute. 

47. Moreover the fact itself was treated histo- 
rically and not ideally. It was not regarded as the 
embodiment of a great hope, or as a consequence 
of some pre-conceived notion of the Person of 
Christ. On the contrary, the hope was expressly 
rested on the fact ; and the Apostolic view of the 
nature of Christ is deduced from His rising again. 
(§§ 57 ff.) In one place St Paul has given an 
outline of ' the Gospel ' by which men ' were saved.' 
' I delivered unto you first of all that which also I l Cor. xv. 

3 ff 

' received, how that Christ died for our sins accord - 
' ing to the Scriptures ; and that He was buried ; 
' and that He hath been raised on the third day, 
'according to the Scriptures; and that He ap- 
' peared to Cephas ; then to the twelve ; then He 
' appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, 
' of whom the greater part remain until now, but 
' some are fallen asleep ; then He appeared to 



The witness 



chap. i. c James ; then to all the Apostles. And last of all, 
' as unto one born out of due time, He appeared 
'to me also... Whether then it be I or they, so 
' we preach, and so ye believed/ Nothing can 
be more simply historic. What we call the mira- 
culous facts are placed beside the others without 
any difference. The Resurrection of the Lord, 
and His appearances after the Resurrection, are 
taught as events of the same kind essentially, and 
to be received in the same way as His Death and 
Burial. Together they formed 'the Gospel;' and 
in this respect, whether it was ' the Three,' or St 
Paul who preached, the substance of their preach- 
ing was the same. 

48. Of 'the five hundred' to whom Christ 
appeared many were still alive when St Paul 
wrote. So too were most of the Apostles, who 
were their fellow-witnesses, as well as St Paul 
himself. Thus we stand, as it were, in the direct 
presence of the immediate witnesses of the fact. 
But it has been said that the very circumstance 
that St Paul reckons the appearance revealed to 
• himself in the same list with the other appear- 
ances, shews that he did not insist on their 
objective reality : they may have been merely 
subjective visions as this is assumed to be. The 
exact converse is, however, the true explanation 



of St Paul 111 

of the fact. St Paul believed, and always acted chap. i. 
as if he believed, that the Lord did appear in 
His human nature as really to him as to the 
other witnesses of the Resurrection. He asserts 
that all the appearances were equally actual, that 
is, external manifestations of the Lord, but not 
that they were all like in circumstances. There 
was an objective reality in the revelation of Christ 
made to him no less than in the revelations to 
others; but this objective reality was not limited 
to one outward shape. It was apprehended (as it 
appears) variously by various minds. Thus we 
find that the forms of the Lord's manifestation 
were, according to the Evangelists, most varied 
(il. § 18). A marvellous change had passed over 
Him. He was the same and yet different. He 
was known only when He revealed Himself. 
He conformed to the laws of our present life, and 
yet He was not subject to them. These seeming 
contradictions were necessarily involved in the 
moral scope of the Resurrection. Christ sought 
(if we may so speak) to impress on His disciples 
two great lessons, that He had raised man's body 
from the grave, and that He had glorified it. 
Nor can we conceive any way in which these 
truths could have been conveyed but by appear- 
ances at one time predominantly spiritual, at an- 
other predominantly material, though both were 



The witness 



chap, l alike real. For the same reason we may suppose 
that the Lord took up into His Glorified Body 
the material elements of that human body which 
was laid in the grave, though, as we shall see 
(ii. § 7), true personality lies in the preservation 
of the individual formula or law which rules the 
organisation in each case, and not in the actual 
but ever changing organisation, which may exist 
at any moment 1 . The resumption of the Cruci- 
fied Body conveyed to ordinary minds a concep- 
tion which could not otherwise easily have been 
gained, while at the same time it brought the 
fact of the Resurrection within the reach (as far 
as could be) of continuous observation. For us 
the appearance to St Paul would certainly in 
itself fail to satisfy in some respects the condi- 
tions of historic reality — it might have been an 
internal revelation — but for him it was essentially 
objective and outward 2 ; and when taken in con- 

1 This consideration will help to explain a difficulty which 
has been felt as to the appearances of the Lord after the Resur- 
rection. His dress (it has been said) must have been purely sub- 
jective. But a little reflection will shew that the special outward 
forms in which the Lord was pleased to make Himself sensibly 
recognisable by His disciples were no more necessarily connected 
with His glorified Person than the robes which He wore. 

2 It is important to observe that on another occasion St 
Paul notices the doubt which he felt as to the character of the 
revelation which he received: 2 Cor. xii. 1 ff. His vision of 
the Lord was realised under the full conditions of human life : 



of the Apostles. 113 

nexion with his life and the other appearances 
which he records, it lays open something more 
of the Divine fulness of the exalted Manhood of 
the Risen Saviour. 

49. It is unnecessary to dwell longer on St 
Pauls direct testimony to the Resurrection, which 
is thus carried up to the time of his Conversion, 
that is to a date not more, at most, than ten 
years after the Lord's death. No one probably 
will deny that the Resurrection was announced 
as a fact immediately after the Passion. No- 
thing else will explain the origin of the Chris- 
tian Church. We may go even further, and take 
for granted that the Apostles who announced it, 
believed in its reality. The life of St Paul may 
be considered conclusive on this point ; and even 
if his life were explicable on any other theory 
than that of a faith which he claimed to share 
with the other Apostles, it is long since a critic 
has been found to maintain that the miraculous 
narrative was an intentional fiction of those by 
whom it was promulgated. It remains then, if 
the Resurrection be unhistoric, that they were 
deceived, and if so, that they were predisposed to 

his 4 ecstasy ' left him uncertain as to the circumstances under 
which he was allowed to hear ' unspeakable words,' whether 
' in the body ' or ' out of the body.' 

W. E. 8 



114 



The witness 



a credulous and ill-grounded belief, either by 
their own character, or by the popular expecta- 
tions of the time. 

50. Before examining whether this was so 
we may observe how incredible it is from the 
nature of the testimony alleged that the Apostles 
could have been deceived. The sepulchre in which 
the Lord had been laid was found empty. This 
fact seems to be beyond all doubt, and is one 
where misconception was impossible. On the 
other hand, the manifestations of the Eisen Sa- 
viour were widely extended both as to persons 
and as to time. St Paul, and in this his record is 
in exact accordance with that of the Evangelists, 
mentions His appearances not only to single wit- 
nesses, but to many together, to ' the twelve ' 
and to 'five hundred brethren at once.' One 
person might be so led away by enthusiasm as to 
give an imaginary shape to his hopes, but it is 
impossible to understand how a number of men 
could be simultaneously affected in the same 
manner 1 . The difficulty of course is further in- 

1 It must be observed that the question here is not as to 
the propagation of a belief in a statement through a large num- 
ber of men, but as to the simultaneous perception by many of 
an alleged phenomenon. The former is intelligible even if the 
belief be in fact unfounded : the latter is not intelligible un- 
less the phenomenon be really objective. In this connexion too 



of the Apostles. 



115 



creased if we take account of the variety as well chap. i. 
as of the number of the persons who were ap- 
pealed to as witnesses of the fact during their 
lifetime ; and of the length of time during which 
the appearances of the Lord were continued. 
It is stated in the Acts that the necessary quali- 
fication of an Apostle was that he should be a 
personal witness of the Resurrection; and St 
Paul admits the qualification, and shews that it 
was fulfilled in his case. Every avenue of delu- 
sion seems to be closed up. For forty days Christ 
was with the disciples talking with them of the 
things pertaining to the kingdom of God (il. § 18). 
If we cannot believe that the Apostles deceived 
others, it seems (if possible) still more unlikely 
that they were the victims of deception. 

51. For there was no popular belief at the 
time which could have inspired them with a faith 

it is most instructive to notice that the report of the Lord's 
Resurrection was in each case disbelieved. Nothing less than 
sight convinced those who had the deepest desire to believe the 
tidings ; and even sight was not in every case immediately con- 
vincing (Matt, xxviii. 17). See [Mark] xvi. 9—11, 13, 14. 
Luke xxiv. 11, 13, 22—24. John xx. 25. In St Matthew the 
promised sight of the Lord is the message of joy which the 
women are to carry to the disciples : xxviii. 7, 10. In St Luke 
the contrast between the effects of the report of the appearance 
of the Lord and the sight of Him is vividly given : xxiv. 34, 35, 
compared with 36 ff. 



8—2 



116 iVo predisposition to 

chap. i. in an imaginary Resurrection. There was none 
among the Greeks whose mythology might ap- 
pear at first sight to offer scope for its sponta- 
neous growth. But without pressing any parti- 
cular interpretation of the remarkable words of 
St Luke, it is evident from the narrative in the 
Acts xvii. Acts that the doctrine of the Resurrection was 

18 32 

the chief point in the address of St Paul which 
arrested the attention and excited the ridicule 
of his Athenian hearers. And naturally so ; for 
while the legends of Greece recorded the eleva- 
tion of men even to the honours of Olympus, 
this elevation was effected by the deposition of 
their humanity. They became gods by ceasing 

Acts xiv. to be men. If the rude inhabitants of Lystra, 
11 

according to the faith of a simpler age, supposed 
that ' the gods were come down in the likeness of 
'men/ in the persons of Paul and Barnabas, yet 
in this case the outward shape was but a disguise 
in which it was believed that their divine majesty 
was veiled and had no essential connexion with 
their nature. There is not the least trace in the 
popular traditions of Greece, much less in Greek 
speculation, of any belief in the possibility of the 
restoration of the dead to the transfigured fulness 
of a human life. The chief myths which ex- 
pressed the idea of the restorative power of na- 
ture were drawn from the stated recurrence of 



the idea of a Resurrection in Greece. 117 

day and night, or from the annual vicissitudes of chap. i. 
the seasons. Their teaching was simply of the 
inexorable and yet kindly alternations of dark- 
ness and light, of death and life, without the 
element of progress or the transforming change 2 Cor. iii. 
'from glory to glory/ Even when the fiction 
became personal it stopped short of the essence 
of Christian hope. If Hercules was fabled to 
have met Death and rescued Alcestis from his 
grasp by force, or to have descended into Hades 
and delivered Theseus from confinement there, 
he is said to have conferred on them no greater 
blessing than a fresh span of earthly existence. 
If after the accomplishment of his labours he 
was himself wedded to immortal Youth in the 
mansions of the gods, it was not till he had 
ceased to be the champion of men, and had con- 
sumed in the fires of (Eta whatever shewed his 
fellowship with them. Nowhere else in ancient 
mythology is there a clearer embodiment of the 
instinct which craves for a personal immortality 
and communion with God than in this noble 
legend, and yet even here the entrance to the 
new life is symbolised by the destruction and 
not by the restoration of human powers. To the 
Greeks the Resurrection, whether as the type or 
as the spring of a new life, was a strange idea. 



118 The Resurrection not anticipated 

chap. i. It included and interpreted their old beliefs, but 
it also transcended them (n. § 14). 

52. Nor was it otherwise with the Jews. 
Even among them there was no belief which 
could have furnished the basis for the apostolic 
Gospel. There was, it is true, a popular expec- 
tation that Elijah, or some other of the old pro- 
phets, should be sent from heaven, whither they 
had been specially withdrawn, to prepare the 
advent of Messiah ; but this expectation had no 
real connexion either in its ground or in its 
scope with the Resurrection of Christ, as preached 
by the Apostles. It centred in a direct mission 
from God and not in a rising from the grave to 
a new life : it culminated in the accomplishment 
of a work among men, and not in the elevation 
of humanity to heaven. After the death of John 
the Baptist, again, some said 4 that he was risen 
4 from the dead ' when they heard of the works 
of Christ ; but this was simply the interpretation 
of a report in connexion with the opinion that 
John was indeed 4 Elias.' Nothing was based 
upon the conjecture. Others, again, in the course 
of the Lord's ministry were, according to the 
Evangelists, restored to life ; but this restoration 
was to a mortal and not to an immortal life. 



by popular Jeivish belief. 119 

Such a resurrection, so far from being a parallel chap, l 
to the Resurrection of Christ, is the very opposite 
to it. The belief in the resuscitation of the dead 
to the vicissitudes of ordinary life would indispose 
for the belief in a rising to a life wholly new in 
kind and issue. And such is the life of the Risen 
Lord which is portrayed in the Gospels. Thus 
while we admit all the records of resuscitation 
contained in the Scriptures, there is absolutely 
not the slightest anticipation in earlier history 
of such a Resurrection as that of Christ. The 
conception as expressed by the Evangelists and 
Apostles has itself the characteristics of a Reve- 
lation (comp. II. § 16). 

53. But it may be said that the idea was in- 
cluded in that of Messiah. There were it is true 
very vivid anticipations of a coming Messiah, of 
some triumphant King who should restore the old 
glories of the house of David, but the path which 
was marked out for Him by common consent was 
that of victory and not of defeat and death. 
There is no evidence that the Jews in our Lord's 
time had formed any conception of a suffering 
Messiah. If Christ spoke of His Passion as the 
Son of Man, they could only ask with wonder, 
Who this Son of Man was ? If the prophet de- j 0 hn xii. 
scribed a deliverer, despised and afflicted, the 84, 



120 The effects of the Resurrection 

question rose to their lips whether ' he spoke 
'of himself or some other.' And if the idea of 
Messiah's death was unknown, so also w^as that 
of the Resurrection, which is the complement 
of it. 

54. Nor were the disciples in this respect 
more far-seeing or better instructed than their 
countrymen. On this point the Gospels are an 
unexceptionable authority; and nothing is more 
striking than the apparent inability of the Apo- 
stles, who were nearest to the Lord, to lay aside 
the hopes in which they had been reared. When 
the Lord was raised from the dead they under- 
stood at last what He had said to them, but not 
Matt. xvi. before. The thought of His death was one which 
they felt ought to be cast aside as a temptation to 
Luke xxiv. distrust. And when at last He died, their hope 

21. 

was gone. There is not a word to indicate that 
this catastrophe led them to any truer view of 
His work. Those who loved Him most devotedly 
came to embalm His corpse. The first tidings of 
His Resurrection seemed as 'idle talk;' and the 
Evangelists paint in vivid colours, the strangeness 
of which proves them to be faithful, 'the slow- 
' ness ' and ' hardness of heart,' which hindered the 
disciples from believing a fact which brought 
with it a revolution of their ancient faith. 



CHAP. I. 
Acts viii. 
34. 



on the character of the Apostles. 121 

55. But the revolution was accomplished. If chap. i. 
we compare the portraiture of the Apostles as 
given in St Luke's Gospel with that in his book 
of the Acts, we cannot but feel that we are look- 
ing on the same men, but transfigured in the 
latter case by the working of some mighty in- 
fluence. There are the old traits of individuality, 
but they are ennobled. The relation in which 
the disciples stand to their Lord is not less per- 
sonal, but it is less material. He is regarded 
as their Saviour as well as their Teacher. What 
was before vague and undecided is defined and 
organised. Those who when Christ was yet with 
them wavered in spite of their love for Him, 
mistook His words, misunderstood His purpose, 
forsook Him at His Passion, after a brief interval 
court danger in the service of a Master no longer 
present, proclaim with unfaltering zeal a message 
hitherto unheard, build up a society in faith on 
His Name, extend to Samaritans and Gentiles 
the blessings which were promised to the people 
of God. However we explain it the change is 
complete and certain. Their whole moral nature 
was transformed. As far as we can see there was 
no spring of hope within them which could have 
had such an issue. The anticipations which they 
shared with their countrymen and those which 
the immediate presence of Christ had awakened, 



122 The ejects of the Resurrection 

chap. i. were dissipated by His death. Whatever new 
impulse moved and animated them must have 
been from without, clear, and powerful. It must 
have been clear, to make itself felt to men who 
were in no way predisposed to yield to it : power- 
ful, to remould once and for ever their notions 
of the work of Messiah. The Resurrection satis- 
fies both conditions. As a fact with which the 
disciples were familiarised by repeated proofs it 
was capable of removing each lingering doubt : as 
a Revelation of which the meaning was finally 
made known by the withdrawal of Christ from 
the earth, it opened a new region and form of 
life, the apprehension of which would necessarily 
influence all their interpretations of the Divine 
promises. If the crucified Lord did rise again, we 
can point to effects which answer completely to 
what we may suppose to have been the working 
of the stupendous miracle on those who were 
the first witnesses of it : if He did not, to what 
must we look for an explanation of phenomena 
for which the Resurrection is no more than an 
adequate cause ? 

56. In nothing is the spiritual transformation 
of the Apostles more striking than in their view 
of the Person of Christ. The words in which He 
spoke of the atonement which He should make 



on the belief of the Apostles. 123 

necessarily fell unheeded by those who could not chap, l 
realise the fitness of His Death. There is nothing 
in the Gospels (and for this we may fairly quote 
them) to shew that personal deliverance from sin 
and corruption — the transfiguration of all man's 
natural powers — was ever connected with His 
work during His lifetime by those who heard 
Him 1 . ' These things/ it is emphatically said, John xii. 
( understood not His disciples at the first.' He Luke xviii. 
received sinners, it is true, but it was not felt 84 * 
that their restoration was a type of the restora- 
tion of all men. Still less, if possible, is there 
any indication that the Apostles understood be- 
fore the Resurrection that the Blood of Christ 
should ratify a new covenant to be embodied 
in a Universal Church. The meaning of the Last 
Supper was hidden from them, as subsequent 
events shewed, till after the Lord's Death. But 
then, from some source or other, a flood of light 
is seen to have been poured on all which they 
had regarded before with silent 'and hesitating 
wonder. The first invitation which they addressed 
to those who had joined in the Crucifixion was 
'to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for Acts ii. 38. 
'the remission of sins.' The day of Pentecost 

1 The inspired confession of St Peter, John vi. 68, is the 
nearest approach to a direct recognition of this Truth which 
the Lord taught (Matt. xx. 28), but in this respect it may be 
compared with the use of the corresponding passage in Acts v. 20. 



124 The fact of the Resurrection 

chap. i. sealed the testimony of Easter. And from that 
time forth union with Christ by baptism was the 
first condition of Apostolic fellowship. His Name 
Acts iv. 12. was declared to be the only 'name under heaven 
'given among men whereby we must be saved/ 
His Passion was acknowledged as part of the di- 
vine counsel. His Return was set forth as the 
certain object of the believers hope. Nor are we 
left in doubt as to the power which had wrought 
the change. The ground on which the Apostles 
rested their appeal was the Resurrection : the 
function which they claimed for themselves was 
to bear witness to it. Their belief was not an 
idle assent, but the spring of a new life. And 
the belief itself was new in kind. It was not 
like that affectionate credulity with which an 
oppressed state or party believes in the reappear- 
ance of a lost leader. It was a confession of error 
before it was an assertion of faith. It involved 
a renunciation of popular dogmas in which those 
who held it had been reared. It proclaimed a 
truth altogether new and unlike any which men 
had held before (§§ 51 f.). If ever the idea of de- 
lusion can be excluded, it must be in a case when 
it is alleged to explain a conviction which trans- 
formed at once the cherished opinions of a large 
body of men of various characters and powers, 
and forced them to a painful and perilous work 



as the basis of Christian teaching. 125 

for which outwardly they had no inclination or chap. i. 
advantages. 

57. If we look a little deeper at the Apostolic 
faith we shall feel still more strongly the effect of 
the belief in the Resurrection. To do this we 
must turn to the Epistles of St Paul, as the 
earliest memorials of Christian teaching addressed 
to Christians ; for hitherto we have noticed only 
the simple message addressed to mixed and un- 
believing hearers. In many respects, as we might 
naturally expect, there is a wide difference be- 
tween the contents of these two forms of the Gos- 
pel ; but their groundwork is identical. The fuller 
and more developed doctrine of St Paul is as essen- 
tially historical as the first address of an Evangel- 
ist to Jews or Gentiles. This has been pointed 
out already (§§ 45 ff.) ; but one most important ele- 
ment of faith which St Paul brings out from the 
history remains yet to be considered. In the first 
addresses of the Apostles reported in the Acts the 
Death of Christ is treated rather as a difficulty to 
be explained, than as a spring of blessing. If we 
realise the circumstances under which they spoke, 
it could not be otherwise, and this peculiarity 
alone justifies us in assuming that the narrative 
is in the main authentic. But St Paul in writing 
to Christians (and no less in speaking to Chris- xx. 



126 The fact of the Resurrection 

chap. i. tians) treats this fact very differently. The Death 
of Christ — the mode and the issue of that Death 
— is the centre round which all his doctrine turns ; 
for to the Christian the Death of Christ involves 

1 Cor.ii.2. the Resurrection. f I determined not to know 
' anything among you/ he says to the Corinthians, 

Gal. vi. 14. ' save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.' ' God for- 
* bid/ he writes in another place, ' that I should 
' glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' 
And the reason is obvious ; since the Death of 
Christ for the Christian includes the whole mys- 
tery of the Redemption. The Resurrection is 
necessarily involved in it, when we acknowledge 
that He who died was the Son of God. Thus the 
great Epistles to which we confine ourselves 
abound with such passages as the following : 

Gal. i. 4. ( Christ gave Himself for our sins.' ' We are not 

20. ° r * V1 * ' our own : we were bought with a price.' ' If 

15° 18 V * ' one died for all > then a11 died * ' • Benold a11 things 
£ have become new. But ' all things are of God, 

'who reconciled us to Himself through Jesus 

Rom. v. 8, ' Christ.' ' God commendeth His love towards us, 

1 in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for 

'us. Much more then, being now justified by 

£ His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through 

( Him.' 



58. 



With these passages are connected others 



as the basis of Christian teaching. 127 

which present the same truth of the restoration chap. i. 

of unity to humanity in the Risen Christ in 

different points of view. Thus : ' To us there is 1 c ° r - viii - 

' one God, the Father, of Whom are all things, 

' and we unto Him ; and one Lord J esus Christ, 

'through Whom are all things, and we through 

' Him/ And again : ' We being many, are one Eom « xii - 

5. 

'body in Christ, and every one members one of 
'another/ We 'are all the children of God by Gal.iii.26, 

28. 

'faith in Christ Jesus... There can be neither Jew 
'nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, 
' there can be no male and female : for ye all are 
' one man in Christ J esus/ Or, in other words, 
Christ, as He is revealed to us, in His Life, His 
Death, His Resurrection, is the One Mediator by 
Whom every blessing comes ; the one all-containing 
Presence by Whom men are bound together. In 
His Person every difference of race, of station, of 
nature, is done away. 'In Christ/ to use the 
favourite phrase of the Apostle, our whole life 
and being and work are centred. 

59. Long familiarity with such words has 
made it very difficult for us to realise the magni- 
tude of the revelation which they convey. The 
fitness of the doctrine to satisfy the wants of men 
makes us inclined to believe that it is natural. 
But if we place on the one side the outward cir- 



128 Doctrine based on the Resur^ otion. 

chap. i. cumstances of Christ's Death, and on the other 
these interpretations of its significance : if we 
measure what seemed to be the hopeless ignominy 
of the catastrophe by which His work was ended, 
and the Divine prerogatives which are claimed for 
Him, not in spite of, but in consequence of that 
suffering of shame ; we shall feel the utter hope- 
lessness of reconciling the fact and the triumphant 
deduction from it without some intervening fact 
as certain as Christ's Passion and glorious enough 
to transfigure its sorrow. For we must ever bear 
in mind that the Apostles do not deal with ab- 
stract doctrine, but with doctrine centred in facts. 
They do not teach a redemption to be wrought 
out by eaeh man for himself, after the example of 
Christ, but of redemption wrought for each by 
Christ, and placed within their reach. They do 
not teach merely an original union of men, but 
1 Cor. xv. a spiritual union accomplished in the Person of 
Christ. They do not teach a liberty which sets 
aside the distinctions and duties of society, but a 
liberty which springs from the transformation of 
every claim of life into a spontaneous act of filial 
love through the revelation of the Father in His 
Son. They do not teach an immortality of the 
soul as a consequence flowing from any concep- 
tions of mans essential nature, but a resurrection 
of the body not only historically established in 



The belief in the Return. 129 

the rising again of Christ, but given to us through chap. i. 
Him who is ' the Resurrection and the Life.' If 
Christ rose, to repeat the alternative which we 
have proposed before, all this is intelligible. The 
miracle was as a new-birth of humanity. If Christ 
did not rise, we have not only to explain how the 
belief in His Resurrection came to be received 
without any previous hopes which could lead to 
its reception ; but also how it came to be received 
with that intensity of personal conviction which 
could invest the Life and Person of Christ with 
attributes never before assigned to any one, and 
that by Jews, who had been reared in the strictest 
monotheism. 

60. There is yet one other aspect in which 
we may see the power of the early faith in the 
Resurrection. Next to the fact that Christ rose 
from the dead, the topic most frequently insisted 
on in the Apostolic writings is that He will come 
again from heaven. It would be out of place to 
discuss the form which this belief took, or the 
interpretation of the passages of the Epistles in 
which it is enforced. One point only may be 
noticed. The material imagery in which the 
belief was popularly embodied shews in what sense 
the Resurrection itself was understood. In pro- 
portion as the Return of Christ was apprehended 
w. r. 9 



130 The belief in the Return. 

chap. i. in a definite outward shape, so also must His 
Departure have been held to have taken place 
in the same manner. The two events are com- 
pletely correlative. And upon reflection it will 
be felt that the expectation of the Return was in 
itself exceptional and in need of explanation. It 
has frequently happened that nations have looked 
for the restoration of the hero-king in whom 
they had seen the pledge of unaccomplished tri- 
umphs. But in each case the hope was based on 
the denial of death. The hero was sleeping like 
Arthur in the deep shades of Avalon, or like 
Barbarossa in some subterranean cavern; or he 
was withdrawn for a time like Harold in the re- 
cesses of a cloister, or like Don Sebastian in obscure 
captivity; but the devotion of his people would 
not believe that he was dead. That alone was 
impossible : against that supreme issue popular 
faith knew no availing power. But it was quite 
otherwise with the belief of Christians. The 
Death of their Lord was as much a part of their 

Phil. ii. Gospel as His Resurrection. Nay more, His 
Exaltation was in one aspect a consequence of His 
Death. Thus if the early looking for Christ has 
any point of contact with the instinctive ex- 
pression of national love, it is essentially dis- 
tinguished from it in the circumstances of its 
origin. Such a fact as the Resurrection inter- 



The witness of the Sacraments. 131 

vening between the Passion and the Return chap. r. 
explains adequately, as it appears nothing else 
could do, the confident expectation of Christ's 
Second Coming in the mode in which the early 
Christians looked for it. 

61. The same also may be said of the Apo- 
stolic interpretation of the Sacraments. It has 
been frequently argued that the Christian doc- 
trine of the Sacraments corresponds with the 
Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. It could 
be shewn that it is equally closely connected, 
though the correspondence is necessarily less 
complete, with the fact of the Resurrection. But 
it does not fall within our scope to examine the 
essential conception of a Sacrament. It is enough 
to observe that the external forms in which the 
conception was realised witness to the transform- 
ing power of the belief in the fact of Christ's 
rising again. The belief in the Resurrection 
which was the groundwork of the Church pene- 
trated every part of its faith and worship. The 
earliest Christians kept 'the eighth day for joy, Barn. Ep. 
'as that on which Jesus rose from the dead;'... 15# 
and the two rites which were of universal ob- 
servance commemorated not obscurely the same 
central fact. The celebration of the Holy Eu- 
charist is absolutely unintelligible without faith 

9—2 



132 The witness of the Sacraments. 

chap. i. in a risen Saviour. £ As often as ye eat this bread 

1 Cor. xi. ' and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death 
'till He come. 5 The rite was not a memorial 
of death simply, but of death conquered by life. 

Bom. iv. The seal of the efficacy of the death of Christ 
was given in the Resurrection; and the limit of 
the commemoration of His Passion was looked 
for in His Return. Baptism, again, was regarded 
as embodying the teaching of the same facts : ' We 

Eom.vi.4. 'were buried with Him by baptism unto death: 
' that like as Christ was raised up from the dead 
' by the glory of the Father, even so we also should 
'walk in newness of life.' So thoroughly was 
the faith in the Resurrection of Christ inwrought 
into the mind of the first Christians that the 
very entrance into their society was apprehended 
under the form of a Resurrection. The fact was 
not an article of their creed, but the life of it. 
It was confessed in action as well as in word. 
And no evidence of the power or reality of a 
belief can be less open to suspicion than that 
which is derived from public services, which, as 
far as all evidence reaches, were contemporaneous 
with its origin and uninterruptedly perpetuated 
throughout the body which holds it. 



62. Thus the continuity of the life of the 
Christian Church is itself, when viewed in this 



The Resurrection the basis of the Church. 133 

light, a substantial proof of the reality of the fact chap. i. 
on which it was established. Other religions 
have been powerful and lasting in virtue of the 
partial truths which they enshrined and offered to 
the devotion of believers. But in Christianity, if 
we regard the claims on which it was first ac- 
cepted and through which it has at all times ex- 
ercised its characteristic power, no such partiality 
is possible. It professes to bring a new life to 
light. It is a subordinate though yet a necessary 
part of its working that it illuminates the past. 
Christ is presented to us not simply as the 
Guide of men, but as the Way. The Apostles 
preach not only that men may be united to God, 
but how they may be united to Him. Every pre- 
cept of Christianity is quickened by the power of 
the Death and Resurrection of Christ. It is by 
the presence of this power that they are Christian ; 
and it is as Christian that they conquer the world. 
Nothing could shew a more profound misappre- 
hension of the Gospel than to substitute the name 
Catholicity for Christianity in the estimate of its 
social and political work. Its essence lies in the 
exhibition of a personal Saviour. ' If thou shalt Eom. x. 9. 
' confess with thy mouth ' Jesus is Lord/ and shalt 
' believe in thine heart that God raised Him from 
i the dead, thou shalt be saved/ From this con- 
fession and this faith spring directly the various 



134 Summary of the 

chap, l organisations of the Church which have found ac- 
ceptance at different times and under different 
circumstances. The one fact of the Resurrection 
underlies them all, and when divorced from it 
they lose their vitality (Intr. § 16). This being 
so it is impossible to exaggerate the importance 
of a living apprehension of the Resurrection as 
the Apostles announced it. It is not, as we have 
seen, taken out of the range of possible facts by 
any antecedent considerations ; and, as it seems, 
no other evidence in its favour consistent with its 
character as the basis of a religion at once his- 
torical and spiritual, could have been more com- 
plete than that which still lies within our reach. 

63. To sum up briefly what has been said. 
It has been shewn that the Resurrection is not an 
isolated event in history, but at once the end and 
the beginning of vast developments of life and 
thought ; that it is the climax of a long series of 
Divine dispensations which find in it their com- 
plement and explanation : that it has formed the 
starting-point of all progressive modern societies, 
ever presenting itself in new lights according to 
the immediate wants of the age. It has been 
shewn that in the character of the fact there is 
nothing which can appear incredible or, in such 



evidence for the Resurrection. 135 

a connexion, even improbable to any one who chap. i. 
believes in a Personal God. It has been shewn 
that the direct evidence for the event is exactly 
of the same kind which we have for the other 
events in the Life of Christ ; that St Paul appeals 
to his own experience and to the experience of the 
Apostles for the certainty of its literal accomplish- 
ment ; that it is incontestable that the Apostles 
acted from the first as if they believed it, and 
that their sincerity cannot be doubted; that the 
nature of the outward proof alleged seems to 
render it impossible that they could have been 
victims of a delusion ; that the substance of their 
belief was something wholly novel, removed 
equally from the belief in a phantastic vision, and 
from the belief in a restoration to a corruptible 
life ; that the effects of it upon themselves were 
such that the conviction must (so to speak) have 
been forced upon them by overwhelming power, 
capable of changing their personal character, of 
transforming their hereditary faith, of inspiring 
them with new thoughts and hopes; that the 
Christian Church was founded upon the belief, 
and embodied it in rites coeval with its founda- 
tion. Nothing has been said of the testimony of 
St John, and St Peter, and the first three Evan- 
gelists, lest exception might be taken to their au- 
thority. Every conclusion has been rested upon 



136 Summary of the 

chap. i. documents which criticism has never assailed. 
But at this point we may take account of the 
evidence from other sources. The common con- 
tents of the Synoptic Gospels can be shewn (I 
believe) to be anterior to the Epistles of St Paul, 
and to contain the sum of the earliest Apostolic 
preaching in Judaea ; if this be so we have in 
them the testimony not of one witness only, but 
the common testimony of most of those who saw 
the Lord after He rose again. The authenticity 
of the first Epistle of St Peter cannot be ques- 
tioned without the most arbitrary neglect of ex- 
ternal evidence, and in that the Apostle to whom 
Christ first shewed Himself speaks of Him as 

l Peter i. ' foreordained before the foundation of the world, 
20 21 

' but (made) manifest in these last times for 
' (those) who by Him do . believe in God, that 
'raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him 
< glory; that (their) faith and hope might be in 
' God/ The Gospel of St J ohn, again, seems to me 
to be an indubitable work of the disciple whom 
Jesus loved ; and after recounting some of the 
appearances of the Lord after His Resurrection, 
the Evangelist completes his Gospel, as it stood 
John xx. originally, with the words : ' Many other signs 
30, 31. 'truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, 
'which are not written in this book; but these 
'are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is 



evidence for the Resurrection. 137 

' the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing chap. i. 
' ye might have life in His name/ 

Indeed taking all the evidence together, it is 
not too much to say that there is no single his- 
toric incident better or more variously supported 
than the Resurrection of Christ. Nothing but 
the antecedent assumption that it must be false 
could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the 
proof of it. And it has been shewn that when it 
is considered in its relation to the whole revela- 
tion of which it is a part, and to the conditions of 
the Divine action, which we have assumed, this 
miraculous event requires a proof in no way dif- 
fering in essence from that on which the other 
facts with which it is associated are received as 
true. In a word, the circumstances under which 
God is said to have given a revelation to men in 
the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus were such as 
to make the special manifestation of power likely 
or even natural ; and the evidence by which the 
special Revelation is supported is such as would 
in any ordinary matter of life be amply sufficient 
to determine our action and belief. 

If we next turn from history to the Individual 
man, it will appear that the Resurrection throws 
as much light on the mysteries of personal life as 
it does on the whole progress of mankind. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE RESURRECTION AND MAN 

C'est un des grands principes du Christianisme, que tout ce 
qui est arrive a Jesus-Christ doit se passer dans Vdme et dans le 
corps de chaque Chretien. 

PASCAL. 

chap. ii. 1. TTITHERTO we have considered the Resur- 
rection simply as a fact, the central point 
of universal history, the outward cause of revolu- 
tions in thought and in society. It "still remains 
to analyse the essential meaning of the fact in re- 
ference to the individual, to discover, if it may be, 
what are the special lessons as to our nature and 
destiny of the Revelation which it contains. Some 
of these we have indeed already touched on in 
considering the views of our Lord's Person and 
Work which were presented by the Apostles after 
He rose from the dead (i. §§ 55 ff.). But we may go 
yet further, and consider the relation of the Resur- 
rection, accepted as a fact, to some of the great 
problems of life, apart from the earliest historical 
interpretation of its teaching. 



Final elements of Life. 139 

2. That we may do this in any way satisfac- chap. ii. 
torily, it is necessary that we should go back for 

a moment to take account of the simplest elements 
to which the questions which are involved in the 
discussion can be reduced. It appears then that 
we are conscious of three distinct existences, Self, 
the World (that is a limited ' Not-F), and God. 
We cannot prove the reality of these existences 
as we have already seen (Introd. § 4) ; but on the 
other hand in some form or other all our life 
testifies to our conviction that they are. It is 
impossible to hold that Self is the only true being 
or self-existent: it is equally impossible to hold 
that Self is the only manifestation of the Being on 
which it depends. Thus we are forced to accept 
that mystery as final, which represents as essen- 
tially distinct, yet for us in inseparable juxta- 
position, on one side the Creator, on the other 
Creation, of which the individual 'I' is a part. 

3. The suppression of any one of these ele- 
ments necessarily involves an essentially imper- 
fect and therefore a false view of the Universe 
and every age offers types of the errors which 
thus arise. Some speculators neglect the free 
power of the human will. Man is, according to 
this view, only a piece of mechanism which 
responds completely to the forces which act upon 



140 The constitution of the Individual. 

chap. ii. it ; but in himself he has no originative power of 
thought or action. The result is Fatalism, which 
is logically unassailable and yet known instinct- 
ively to be untrue. Others again with a nobler 
aspiration reduce life to a personal relation be- 
tween man and his Creator. For them the world 
vanishes before this awful fellowship, and finds no 
place in their scheme of existence. So mysticism 
arises, which with all its holy power yet does vio- 
lence to the conditions of life, and neglects some 
of its richest resources and most certain safe- 
guards against fatal error. Then comes a reac- 
tion, and a third school possessed by the fulness of 
earthly existence refuse to look beyond it- For 
them God lies wholly beyond the region of know- 
ledge. But the conscience of man triumphs over 
material Positivism and claims a religion, which 
by a strange irony is offered in a shape most akin 
to Fetishism. Thus humanity rejects each im- 
perfect system, which severally, as systems, are 
iiTefragable ; and waits patiently for that com- 
pleter wisdom which shall harmonise the present 
contradictions of the full view of life. 

4. If then we look outside ourselves there is 
an antithesis which cannot be reduced. If again 
we look at that which we each call /, it will 
be seen to be essentially twofold. There is an 



The constitution of the Individual, 141 

organism, and something which acts through the chap. ii. 
organism. There is a unity of will with a mul- 
tiplicity of functions. There is an element of per- 
manence in the midst of constant change. There 
are laws and a power which makes itself felt in 
accordance with these laws. The organism, with 
all its variety of sense, its capacity for service, its 
laws of decay and assimilation, we call the body : 
the self-moving power, which originates and con- 
trols action, we call the soul. And this twofold 
being is naturally influenced by a twofold affinity. 
On the one side, through the 'body/ it is con- 
nected with the world : on the other, through the 
' soul' (the ' spirit'), with God. Or, in other words, 
the body is inherently finite, the soul aspires at 
least towards the infinite. Thus recurring to what 
has been already said (§ 2) we see that conscious- 
ness reveals to us in ourselves individually a 
fundamental antithesis corresponding to the anti- 
thesis which we are forced to recognise without us. 

5. Yet more : the / consists in this antithesis. 
Nothing is more common than to hear it assumed 
that the 'soul' is the real self; Yet nothing can 
be more clear upon reflection than that the only 
'self of which we are conscious is made up of 
'soul' and 'body.' The workings of these two 
are absolutely inseparable. We cannot contem- 



142 The problems of human Life. 

chap. ii. plate the independent action of either for an 
instant. If we try to do so, we find at the outset 
the presence of some condition or power which is 
due to the complementary part in our whole 
nature. One remarkable proof of this duality (so 
to speak) in our life — of all that we are, as far as 
we can observe ourselves — may be found in the 
fact that some speculators have seen in life nothing 
but the manifestation of the one element, and 
others nothing but the manifestation of the other, 
since the demonstrable presence on every occa- 
sion of either taken alone seemed to exclude the 
presence of the other. Nor is there, indeed, any 
possible refutation of the 'materialist' or 'spi- 
' ritualist 3 systems except in the appeal to the 
individual consciousness. 

6. Thus we find ourselves face to face with 
two great personal problems : What is the perma- 
nent relation of soul and body ? and next, What is 
the relation of the complex self to God ? in which 
latter question is included the mystery of sin. To 
these may be added one other question, not per- 
sonal but yet inevitable to man : What is the 
relation of the individual self to the world ? In 
other words, Shall rue be hereafter ? and, if so, 
What shall we be ? and, What is the destiny of 
creation generally ? Round these three ques- 



Elements of Personality. 143 

tions the noblest thoughts of the ancient world chap. ii. 
turned: to these the most daring speculations 
of later times have been addressed. What light 
is thrown upon them by faith in the Resurrec- 
tion ? 

7. Our present personality, as we have seen 
(§ 4), involves the antithesis of soul and body. 
One element is not more needful to it than the 
other. Indeed, the clearest conception which we 
can form of a person is the special limitation of 
a self-moving power. The power must be self- 
moving because a person is necessarily endowed 
with a will which is a spring of motion. It must be 
limited, because, as far as our experience reaches, 
a will can only make itself felt in and through an 
organism with which it is connected. And yet, 
further, the mode of the limitation, including the 
fundamental laws by which the generic limitation 
is governed, the original specialities of the par- 
ticular organism and the accumulated acts by 
which the effects of these laws and properties are 
modified, expresses the individual differences of 
personality among beings similar in kind. This 
conception of personality presents to the mind an 
easy method of conceiving of the change of cha- 
racter in the same person, and likewise of the 
continuous effect of soul and body upon one 



144 Elements of Personality. 

chap. ii. another while the body is in constant flux. For 
man the body is the outward expression of the 
limitation in each particular case. Yet the word 
. must be used with caution. We cannot under- 
stand by body simply a particular aggregation of 
matter, but an aggregation of matter as repre- 
senting in one form the action of a particular law, 
or rather the realisation of a special formula. The 
specific law or formula of assimilation and com- 
bination is that which is really essential and per- 
manent. The same material elements may enter 
into a thousand bodies, but the law of each body, 
as explained above, gives to it that which is 
peculiar to and characteristic of it. To take an 
illustration from Chemistry, the same element, 
pure carbon for instance, can exist in forms 
wholly different. This difference we represent to 
ourselves under the idea of some peculiar law of 
arrangement of the similar particles in each case. 
And conversely we can conceive how if the con- 
stituent element were changed the action of the 
different laws of arrangement (supposed to con- 
tinue) would produce substances truly answering 
to those which resulted from their action before. 
Thus with regard to man, there is nothing unna- 
tural in supposing that the power which preserves 
his personality by acting according to the indi- 
vidual law of his being in moulding .the conti- 



Elements of Personality. 145 

nuous changes of his present material body and chap, il 
all that depends upon it, will preserve his per- 
sonality hereafter by still acting according to the 
same law in moulding the new element (so to 
speak) out of which a future body may be fash- 
ioned. In other words we can understand how 
the law which now rules the formation of our 
body may find its realisation hereafter in some 
other element, while the new body will be es- 
sentially the same as the old one, as expressing 
the corresponding action of the same law in re- 
lation to the new sphere in which it may be 
supposed to be placed. No person is what he is 
solely in himself, but is in part dependent on all 
around him. If an individual remained unchang- 
ed while everything else changed he might be 
physically the same, but he would not be the 
same morally. There is a necessary relativity in 
our nature, and according to the view just indi- 
cated, since all the forms of being are changed 
in the new sphere of existence, each body is 
changed harmoniously with the remainder and in 
due proportion to the whole. 

8. This consideration will help us in exa- 
mining on grounds of simple reason the question 
of the permanence of our personality after death. 
This, as far as we can see, can happen only in 
W. E. 10 



146 There is no reason to suppose that the 

chap. ii. two ways. It may be argued that the soul after 
death will itself have a personal existence ; or 
that it will continue to act through an organisa- 
tion (where the word is used in its widest sense) 
which is itself the expression of the same law as 
moulds all that we now call our body. These 
alternatives must be considered separately. 

9. First then on principles of reason there 
seems to be no ground whatever for supposing that 
the soul as separate from the body is personal 1 . 
There is indeed an imperious instinct 2 which 
affirms that we shall survive death, but this in- 
stinct does not attempt to analyse our being, or 
deal with its constituent elements. It teaches 
simply that the dissolution of which our present 
senses are cognisant is not the destruction of our- 
selves; but it does not define, or even tend to 
define, in what the I consists, further than this. 
Personality implies special limitation, and this 
limitation (as far as we can see) is conveyed per- 
fectly by our bodies, which though continually 
changing yet change according to one law. It is 
conceivable that the soul may have some indi- 

1 Nothing is here said of the intermediate state of the soul 
after death and before the Eesurrection ; and probably there is 
something wholly deceptive in our use of words of time ('before' 
and 'after') in such a connexion. Comp. Introd. § & 

2 Compare p. 12, n. 



Soul separate from the Body is personal. 147 

vidual inner limitation (so to speak), but of this chap. ii. 
we have and can have naturally no knowledge. 
Doubtless the soul is limited by general laws, 
which circumscribe its powers and capacities, for 
otherwise it would not only have an affinity with 
the infinite, but be infinite ; but these general 
laws do not constitute individual personality. 
Again: if souls are originally the same at their 
connexion with the body we cannot shew how 
they can be so affected by it as that they should 
bear away, when wholly dissociated from it, the 
various results of the connexion. Nor if they 
are originally different can we see how the origi- 
nal differences would be modified; while the 
assumption of the original difference introduces a 
fresh difficulty into the question, unless we sup- 
plement the assumption, as Plato did, by the 
assertion of the previous existence of souls. 

10. Popular language and belief are so strong 
in the assertion of the personal immortality of 
the soul in our post-Christian times, that it is 
very difficult for us to realise the true state of the 
problem. The firmness of Christian faith, even 
where its presence is least suspected, influences 
the conclusions if not the processes of indepen- 
dent reasoning. Happily, the noble speculations 
of the Greek philosophers are a monument of 

10—2 



148 The Judgment 

chap. ii. what thought alone could do on this and kindred 
topics. Yet even here instinct will make itself 
felt ; and again and again the sequence of an 
argument is broken by the independent assertion 
of the truth which instinct and not reason fore- 
sees or feels. One writer however follows the 
guidance of his logic to its last conclusions. In 
his formal treatise On the Soul Aristotle has 
examined with the most elaborate care the vari- 
ous elements included in it, and their mutual 
relations. He seems to watch the process which 
he guides as one wholly unconcerned in its issue. 
Sternly and pitilessly he states the last conclusion 
on man's natural hope of immortality as tested 
by reason; and the very coldness of his words 
gives them an undescribable pathos. 

De Anima 11. r In every natural object there are/ he 
says, 'two elements, the one the characteristic 
( matter (so to speak), which includes potentially all 
£ the manifestations of the object, and the other the 
f causative and active principle. These differences 
' therefore must exist essentially in the soul ; and 
f the rational part of man is necessarily twofold. 
'On the one side is the "reason" which is to be 
f so called in virtue of its becoming everything; 
' on the other that which takes its name from 
' making everything, in the manner in which (to 



of Aristotle. 149 

' take an example) light does ; for in a certain chap. ii. 
'sense light makes colours existing potentially, 
'to be colours actually. And this latter reason'— 
that is, the active reason which has an absolute 
existence — ' is separable and impassive and un- 
' mixed in essence/ It is not dependent in any 
sense on the present organism of man; it is not 
affected by the changes which it reveals ; it is not 
modified in any manner by the connexion in 
which it is placed. It is independent of a union 
which is begun and ended in time, 'and when 
' separated it is that alone which it is essentially.' 
It carries with it no trace of its temporary 
combination with the passive "reason"; 'and 
'this alone' — this impersonal and unchangeable 
reason — 'is immortal and eternal.' It has been 
and we are unconscious of the past. It will 
be and we shall be unconscious of the present. 
' We have no recollection' of any former exist- 
ence, and we shall have none hereafter of our 
life on earth, 'because this' eternal reason which 
alone survives 'is impassive, while the passive 
'and susceptible reason' — the reason which is the 
seat of all personal feeling and emotion and im- 
pression — ' is corruptible, and without the eternal 
' reason is incapable of thought or consciousness.' 

12. One very important reflexion will illus- 



150 The Arguments reach 

chap. ii. trate the force and bearing of Aristotle's judg- 
ment. We commonly interrogate the soul only as 
to the future : it can speak equally well of the past. 
Every argument for the soul's permanence hereafter 
based upon its essential character, tells equally in 
favour of its preexistence. Reason cannot take 
into account the idea of its creation ; and all the 
presumptions drawn from what we can observe of 
its nature and action to shew that it will be, shew 
equally that it has been. The idea of ' continu- 
ance' is equally applicable to the beginning and to 
the end of the life which falls Under our observa- 
tion. In other words, the purely logical arguments 
which are supposed to prove that the soul is 
immortal, prove that it is eternal 1 ; and the legiti- 

1 In this aspect the opening chapter of the Analogy is a 
most instructive lesson in the weakness of pure reason to 
establish that hope of a future life, which has existed more 
or less in every period. Here only, perhaps, Bp Butler 
has been unable to cast off the influences of the time in which 
he lived, and adopted the narrow methods of popular argu- 
ment which were current in a mechanical age. Throughout 
he assumes that the 'living being' or 'agent,' of which he 
gives no definition, is separable from our present organisation 
and in itself personal. And again he never notices the appli- 
cation of his arguments to a prior as well as to a future exist- 
ence. This is the more remarkable as he considers with 
remarkable candour and wisdom the objection urged from the 
extension of his reasoning to the life of brutes. From what- 
ever cause the defects arose, and it seems most likely that the 
thoughts which he failed to meet were wholly foreign to the 
speculations of the time, the fact remains that he assumes the 



backivard as ivell as forward. 151 

mate deduction is, that as we are now unconscious chap. ii. 
of any previous existence, and cannot in any way 
connect our present circumstances and characters 
in this world with our conduct in another former 
world, so, if we survive in any future state, we 
shall be equally unconscious of this through which 
we are now passing, and not recognise any retri- 
butive justice in the conditions under which we 
shall exist. At least any presumption that we 
shall be conscious hereafter of our present life 
while we are not conscious of that which we have 
passed through before, could only be drawn from 
the observation of a corresponding difference be- 
tween the conditions and circumstances of our 
present and past lives which obviously lies wholly 
without the range of our faculties. For us, as far 
as the teaching of nature goes, this life stands 
absolutely alone. The application of the general 
experience which it gives is confined within the 
limits of its duration. 

two great principles which above all others he ought to prove, 
the possibility of conceiving our personality apart from our 
present bodies, which, though changeable, are yet changeable 
according to observed laws ; and next that what is true if we 
look back to the first origin of our present life is not true if we 
look forward to its close. How momentous the latter assump- 
tion is may be seen at once if any one will substitute 1 birth ' 
for ' death ' and ' origin ' for ' destruction ' in the earlier argu- 
ments of the chapter. The former assumption is even more 
obviously the assumption of the chief point in the conclusion. 



152 The teaching of Plato. 

chap. ii. 13. The judgment of Aristotle sums up the 
final result of Greek Philosophy on the soul, as a 
subject of pure speculation. From his time phi- 
losophy became essentially practical. The great 
questions of being and knowledge were merged in 
those of morals, in» which intuition has a legitimate 
exercise. Later writers therefore furnish nothing 
of importance to the exact discussion of the hope 
of immortality ; but it is impossible not to com- 
pare the conclusions of Aristotle with those of 
Plato. The master is as confident and sanguine 
as the scholar is sceptical and passionless. But 
the method of Plato is as full of instruction as the 
results of Aristotle. Plato is sure of his belief 
beforehand. His arguments are merely to justify 
it. And when he feels that these — though 
strengthened by the bold proposition that we do 
bring with us to earth traces of our former exist- 
ence — are unequal to support the weight of his 
conclusion, he makes, as he expresses it, a bold 
venture, and presents the substance of his faith 
in one of those magnificent myths, by which he 
endeavours to bridge over the chasm between the 
seen and unseen worlds 1 . His "Republic" closes 
with the noble legend of Er the son of Armenius, 
who saw in a trance the judgment of the dead, 

1 I venture to refer for a fuller discussion of these myths 
to the Contemporary Review, 1866. 



The soul has no power to make an organisation. 153 

and the hidden glories of the world. For once, chap. ii. 

he tells us, a soul was allowed to return to the 

body without drinking the waters of Forgetfulness. Plat.Ees^. 

And so ' this story was saved and not lost, and it x * 621 ' 

' will save us/ he adds, ' should we listen to its 

'teaching; and then we shall happily cross the 

'river of Lethe and not defile our souls; but 

'deeming that the soul is immortal and capable 

'of bearing every evil and winning every good, 

'we shall keep close to the upward path, and 

' practise in every way justice and wisdom, that 

'wo may be friends to ourselves and friends to 

' tht gods/ ' To confidently affirm that [the fate Hat. 

' of souls] is such as I have described/ Socrates 114. 

says at the end of the "Phaedo," 'becomes no 

' reasonable man. But I do think that it becomes 

' him to believe that it is either this or like this, 

' if at least the soul is shewn to be immortal ; 

' and that it is worthy of him to face peril boldly 

'in such a belief, for the peril is glorious; and 

'such thoughts he ought to use as a charm to 

' allay his own misgivings, in which spirit I have 

' myself dwelt thus long upon the story/ For in Plat. 

such questions the really brave man ' will either 35. 

' learn or discover the truth, or if this be impos- 

' sible he will take at any rate the best of human 

'words and that which is most irrefragable, and 

'carried on this as on a raft sail through life in 



154 The soul has no poiver 

'perpetual jeopardy, unless one might make the 
' journey on a securer vessel, some divine word if 
' it might be, more surely and with less peril.' 

14. If then pure reason cannot suggest any 
arguments to establish the personality of the soul 
when finally separated from the body, and for us 
personality is only another name for existence, 
still less can it shew any grounds for supposing 
that it possesses in itself the power of assuming at 
death another organisation corresponding to our 
present body whereby its personality may be pre- 
served. Our present body is not in any way, as 
far as we can see, due primarily to the action of 
the soul, which acts through and upon it; and 
when the body is dissolved, the only action of the 
soul of which we can have naturally any know- 
ledge ceases. It may have some inherent energy 
in virtue of which it manifests itself throughout 
the ages, now in this form, now in that. It may, 
but that seems harder to conceive, have gained on 
earth the means of realising a personal existence 
hereafter. It may, as many thought even among 
God's ancient people, go back to Him who gave 
it and continue to exist only as part of His Infi- 
nite Being. Our utter incapacity of forming a 
clear conception of any mode of existence differing 
in essence from our own, and not simply in extent 



to make an organisation for itself. 155 

of similar powers, forces us to contemplate these chap. h. 
and other alternatives, and to withhold our judg- 
ment till we gain some new light. If we look 
within or without we have absolutely no analogy 
to carry our thoughts one step onward into a 
realm wholly unknown: none to shew that the 
soul will exert a power there which has been un- 
developed or dormant here. Every change which 
we can follow is simply of the earth. Faith, or 
love, or instinct, may cross the dark river, but 
they go alone : reason cannot follow them. Nay 
more : reason shews that the visions which they 
see are mere shadowy projections of what we see 
and feel now. 

15. Thus we are placed before a final con- 
tradiction. On the one side we are so constituted 
as to cling to the belief in the continuance of our 
personality after death : on the other reason points 
to death as a phenomenon absolutely singular 
which closes life, as far as we know it, and takes 
away the conditions of our life. But if a single 
experience can shew that these conditions are not 
destroyed, but suspended as far as we observe 
them, or modified by the action of some new law : 
that what seems. to be a dissolution is really a 
transformation : that the soul does not remain 
alone in a future state, but is still united with 



156 The conflict of Instinct and Reason 

chap. ii. our body, that is with an organism which in a new 
sphere expresses the law which our present body 
now expresses in this (supr. §7); then reason will 
welcome the belief in our future personality no less 
than instinct. For the truth is not against reason 
but beyond it. Reason shews simply that what 
we commonly see, and what we can learn from the 
analysis of our own nature lends no support to 
the conclusion which we cannot abandon. But 
let some new fact come in, and all will be changed, 
if that reveals to us something of the character of 
life after death. 

16. Such a fact is the Resurrection. In one 
sense no event can be more natural than this, so 
far as it answers to a craving for knowledge of the 
unseen world, which by its intensity indicates that 
it was intended to be satisfied, as much as any 
other original instinct of man. In another sense 
nothing can be more beyond nature, for it intro- 
duces us to a novel phase of being, of which we feel 
even in the presence of this revelation that we can 
know only a part darkly and ' in a riddle.' For the 
Resurrection is not like any one of the recorded 
miracles of raising from the dead. It is not a 
restoration to the old life, to its wants, to its special 
limitations, to its inevitable close, but the revela- 
tion of a new life foreshadowing new powers of 



solved by the Resurrection. 157 

action and a new mode of being. It issues not chap. ii. 

in death but in the Ascension for which it is the John xx. 

17 

preparation and the condition. It is not an ex- 
tension of an existence with which we are ac- 
quainted, but the manifestation of an existence 
for which we hope. It is not like any of the 
fabled apotheoses of the friends of gods, whose 
spirits purified by the funeral fire from the stains 
of earth, were carried to the immediate presence 
of those whom they had loved, but it is the con- 
secration of a restored and perfected manhood. 
It is not a withdrawal from men or a laying aside 
of humanity, complete, final, and immediate, but 
the pledge of an abiding communion of a Saviour 
with the fulness of our nature on earth and in 
heaven. It is not the putting off of the body, but 
the transfiguration of it. And so in its record it 
is not like any of the dreams in which earlier 
poets had endeavoured to convey to others the 
hope which they cherished. Its teaching is con- 
veyed in a series of facts. Now one incident and 
now another brings out some aspect of the whole 
truth, as far as we can apprehend it. But all in- 
cidents alike are simple and in a certain sense 
natural. No vision is opened of glory or suffering. 
No display is made of fresh powers. No over- 
powering exhibition of majesty strikes unwilling 
conviction into the hearts of those who were before 



158 The character of 

chap ii. unbelieving 1 . The Lord rose from the grave ; and 
those who had known Him before, knew that He 
was the same and yet changed. This is the sum 
of the Apostle's testimony, the new Gospel of the 
world. 

1 It has been objected that our Lord revealed Himself only 
to believers or to those inclined to believe. If we regard the 
resurrection as a revelation of a new life it is obvious that it 
could not have been otherwise. In order to establish the belief 
in the reality of this new existence it was necessary that some 
power should exist in the witnesses to apprehend it. There was 
a spiritual side to the manifestation of the Eisen Christ which 
could only be discerned spiritually. If it had been necessary 
merely to shew the restoration of the Lord to the condition of 
an ordinary human life, as in the case of Lazarus, the testi- 
mony of indifferent spectators would have been adequate. But 
if the appearances were designed to be a revelation of a glori- 
fied human life, then the manifestation to unbelievers would 
not only have been contrary to the usual method of the Provi- 
dence of God, but also, as far as we can see, unavailing. For if 
the Lord had appeared to them as a man simply, their evi- 
dence would have gone to establish a false view of His Risen 
Person : if He had appeared to them under new conditions of 
being, they would have been unable to acknowledge the reality 
of His manifestation. The believer who had familiarly known 
Christ and felt His power could alone grasp and harmonise 
the two modes of the Revelation of His Person. Afterwards, 
when the idea of the Risen Christ was fully established, we 
find an appearance granted to St Paul, which carried with it 
immediate conviction to an unbeliever ; but till this idea was 
established, as far as we can judge, such an appearance would 
have been without effect. The appearance to St Paul was as 
real as the others (^(pdrj) but made under different circum- 
stances. It was a revelation of Christ glorified and as such 
left its impression on all the teaching of St Paul. 



the appearances of the Lord. 159 

17. In this connexion there is one most chap. ii. 
important consideration which is commonly over- 
looked. The Apostles announce the fact of the 
Resurrection and its immediate bearing upon the 
individual hopes of men, but they do not deve- 
lope its significance. The fact is added to the 
sum of human experience. The interpretation 
of it is left for life. And so it is that with the 
comments of eighteen centuries its meaning is 
yet unexhausted. Deeper insight, wider sympa- 
thies, grander aspirations, have been granted to 
men in the progress of ages, but the idea of the 
Resurrection penetrates beneath and beyond all 
the thoughts which history or science has hitherto 
made known. The Gospel is still the same, but 
known more fully with ever-growing clearness as 
the successive crises of thought and life have 
shewn its fitness for meeting them. And it is 
obvious why this is so. The Eesurrection is a 
new creation. Its issues cannot be contemplated 
by man at first, though its utmost consequences 
are included in its actual realisation. And just 
as in the creative works of human genius har- 
monies and lessons are found in virtue of their 
relation to absolute truth, of which their authors 
were never conscious, so in this which is the 
Truth, all later speculation will find fresh light 
upon the problems of human existence. 



160 The full significance of the Resurrection. 

chap. ii. 18. There are indeed passages, especially in 
the Epistle to the Ephesians and in the writings 
of St John, in which the Apostles announce mys- 
teries springing out of the Resurrection which 
are only now dawning upon the students of his- 
tory and life ; but as a general rule they declare 
the fact that 1 Christ rose again' without dwelling 
on those aspects of its meaning for which men 
were not at that time prepared by knowledge or 
experience. In this respect the narratives of the 
Resurrection are unparalleled. The Evangelists 1 
record the miracle so calmly, looking solely, as 
we must think, at its historic aspect, that in read- 
ing of it we lose sight of its stupendous signifi- 
cance from the natural simplicity of the details 
in which its lessons are conveyed. The mani- 
festations of the risen Saviour are mixed with 
scenes of fear, of misgiving, of unbelief. He ap- 
peared in Galilee and at Jerusalem : now at night 
and again in the early morning : in the upper 
room and under the open sky: in an assembly 
gathered, as it would seem, for religious exercise, 
and to men busy with their ordinary work. 
Nothing is (if we may so speak) farther from the 

1 At this point I shall use the writings of the New Testa- 
ment without reserve. If the Eesurrection is admitted on 
other grounds to be a fact, no one will (I believe) question the 
general veracity of the Evangelists. 



The Lord the same yet changed. 



161 



thought of the Evangelists than to give a doc- chap. ii. 
trinal view of the mystery which they declare. 
Christ was the same and yet changed. That was 
in substance what they had to tell; and in that 
lies the full answer to the first great question 
before us. The body is not destroyed by death. 
Its union with the soul is for a time (as we are 
forced to conceive of it, though perhaps quite 
wrongly) interrupted but not closed. Our specu- 
lative doubts are met, as they could only be met, 
by a fact. 

19. It is unnecessary to dwell on the various 
details by which the identity of the Lord's human 
body is brought out in the Gospels. It is obvious 
from a mere enumeration that they meet each 
misgiving. The body which the disciples had laid John xx. 
in the sepulchre was no longer to be found when 
they looked for it. The marks of the Passion were 
made sensibly present in the Risen Saviour to him 
who would not otherwise believe. Nay more, 
Christ Himself offered this very proof to those 
who ( supposed that they had seen a spirit/ ( Be- 3^ k | 3 xxiv * 
' hold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself : 
' handle me, and see, for a spirit hath not flesh Comp. 
c and bones, as ye see me have'../ And He took 20. 
' [meat] and did eat before them/ And it can j^^^ 
hardly be without reference to this incident that 
w. E. 11 



162 The Lord the same yet changed. 

chap. ii. St J ohn in his Epistle reckons this ' handling ' 
1 John i.l. last among the various revelations which God 
had given of His Son. The length of time too 
during which the appearances were extended fa- 
miliarised the disciples (so to speak) with the 
mystery which had at first filled them with terror. 
Acts i. 3. For forty days He ' shewed Himself alive to them 
' by many infallible proofs, being seen of them and 
' speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom 
< of God/ 

20. But this Body which was recognised as 
essentially the same Body, had yet undergone 
some marvellous change, of which we can gain a 
faint idea by what is directly recorded of its mani- 
festations 1 . Thus we find that the Person of 
Christ was not recognised directly by those who 
saw Him. However firm their conviction was 
afterwards that they had ' seen the Lord/ they 
knew Him first when He was pleased to make 
Himself known. Human sense alone was not 

1 It is not, I believe, a mere fancy to see a typical indi- 
cation of this change in the words used by our Lord Himself 
of His glorified Body: Luke xxiv. 39 ('flesh and bones'). 
The significant variation from the common formula ' flesh and 
blood' must have been at once intelligible to Jews, accustomed 
to the provisions of the Mosaic ritual, and nothing would have 
impressed upon them more forcibly the transfiguration of 
Christ's Body than the verbal omission of the element of blood 
which was for them the symbol and seat of corruptible life. 



The Resurrection. 



163 



capable of discerning Who He was. It could not chap. ii. 
be otherwise if His Body was glorified, for our 
senses can only apprehend that which is of kin- 
dred nature with themselves. At one time it was Matt, 
by a word of general or personal tenderness, that j 0 h n X x. 
Christ awakened the faith by which sense was 16 ' 19 * 

quickened: at another time by the celebration Luke xxiv. 

30 31 

of that holy rite which He had instituted before 

His death : at another by a mighty act which John xxi. 

symbolised the blessing of the apostolic work. 

21. And as Christ's Body was no longer 
necessarily to be recognised, so also it was not 
bound by the material laws to which its action 
was generally conformed. He is found present, 
no one knows from whence. He passes away, 
no one knows whither. He stands in the midst 
of the little group of the Apostles ' when the John xx. 

19 26 

' doors were shut for fear of the Jews/ ' He Luk e ixiv. 
' vanished out of the sight' of those whose eyes 31 - 
were opened that they knew Him. And at last 
' while they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud Acts i. 9. 
* received Him out of their sight/ It is impossible 
not to feel in reading the narratives that we are 
regarding a form of existence human, indeed, yet 
indefinitely ennobled by the removal of needs and 
limitations to which we are at present subject. ' 
It is vain for us to speculate on the nature of 

11—2 



164 The transfiguration of our ivhote being. 

chap. ii. that transformed human Body. We can form no 
clear positive conception which is not shaped by 
the present laws of thought. Negatively we can 
only say that it was not bound by those laws of 
space (for example) which necessarily enter into 
all that we think or do. The life which is re- 
vealed to us is not the continuation of the pre- 
sent life, but a life which takes up into itself 
all the elements of our present life, and trans- 
figures them by a glorious change, which we can 
regard at present only under signs and figures. 

22. Thus the Resurrection answers as com- 
pletely as it can be answered the first great question 
by which we are met. In the Person of Christ 
we see the whole of man, his body and soul, 
raised together from the grave. No part is left 
behind. The whole complex nature is raised and 
glorified. It is not that the soul only lives ; nor 
yet that the body, such as it was before, is restored 
to its former vigour. The Saviour, as far as we 

2 Cor. v. 4. regard His Manhood, is not unclothed, to use St 
Paul's image, but clothed upon. Nothing is taken 
away, but something is added by which all that 

l Cor. xv. was before present is transfigured. ' The corrupt- 
ible puts on incorruption : the mortal puts on 
' immortality.' 



The idea of Sin. 165 

23. This thought brings us to the second chap. ii. 
question, the final relation of man to God, of man, 
that is, as subject to the consequences of sin. 
And here it will be necessary to consider somewhat 
carefully the idea which lies at the root of sin, 
lest it may seem that we are dealing with a mere 
phantom. But still we may leave out of our 
investigation some questions which have been 
connected with it. Our inquiry does not extend 
to the obstacles which material nature places in 
the way of man, of whatever form they may be, 
nor yet to the mutual relations of animals to one 
another or to man. We are obviously wholly 
incapable of knowing anything of the position in 
which any beings except ourselves stand towards 
God, or of their latent powers, or of their future 
destiny. It is quite conceivable that what ap- 
pears to us in the light of suffering and decay in 
beings wholly unlike ourselves may to a higher 
intelligence assume a different aspect; or (and 
this seems even from a view of nature far more 
probable) the fate of the physical and animal 
creation may be bound up by some mysterious 
influence with that of man. At least, we can see 
the difference between what we call evil in inor- 
ganic or brute nature, and evil (moral evil) in man 
which involves the operation of a free will, and 
an acknowledged relation between the person of 



166 Sin not necessary for mans development 

chap. ii. the sinner and God. Whether these conditions 
of action can exist in the case of other creatures 
or not we are wholly unable to determine ; but it 
is at least remarkable that as soon as the pheno- 
mena of free will are observable in animals (as in 
the case of those which have been long associated 
with man) we attribute to them a measure of 
responsibility by according praise and blame to 
their actions. 

24. If then we look at the problem in its 
simplest form it is evident that the possibility of 
sin is necessarily included in the creation of a 
finite, free being ; for the simplest idea which we 
can form of sin, is the finite setting itself up 
against the infinite. Selfishness, which exists 
potentially as soon as ' self exists, is the ground of 
all sin. Hence we can see how a perfect finite 
being may yet be exposed to temptation, for the 
sense of limitation brings with it the thought, or 
the possibility of the thought, of passing the limit. 

25. And not only is a perfect finite being in 
this way necessarily under a moral probation, but 
the actual existence of sin is not required for his 
moral development. It is necessary to dwell on 
this point, for if it could be shewn that sin belongs 
essentially to the idea of individual human 



Evil may be the occasion of good, 167 

progress as one of the conditions of its realisation, chap. ii. 
we might at once dismiss as vain the obstinate 
questionings with which we ponder over its future 
issues. It is only if sin is an intrusive corruption 
of our nature that we need feel anxious about the 
permanence of its results. But it follows from 
the final analysis of sin which has been given that 
man, though he had not sinned, might yet have 
practised some (at least) essentially human 
virtues: all indeed which are comprised in 
self-control and the recognition of dependence. 
Nothing therefore can be more false than to say 
that ' moral good and moral evil — as distinguished 
i from the possibility of good and evil — came into 
' being together.' A command implies the possi- 
bility of obedience and disobedience, but obedience 
is no less real though disobedience in fact never 
takes place. Love, again, the centre of all social 
virtues, and truth the centre of all intellectual 
virtues, are both wholly independent of the pre- 
sence of evil among men. 

26. But it may be said that if moral evil 
were removed from the world 'life would be 
'impoverished/ So indeed it appears at first 
sight to us who are habituated to the startling 
contrasts of life : for us shadow is a necessity of 
distinct vision. Yet it would be difficult to shew 



168 Evil not the condition of good. 

chap. ii. that the more splendid qualities which are brought 
out (for instance) by war are better, in any sense, 
than their correlatives which need no such field 
for their display : that the heroic forgetfulness or 
contempt of danger or suffering, which springs 
from a great passion or a generous impulse in 
the midst of a fierce conflict or under the sense of 
a deep wrong, is better than that rational self- 
coDtrol which we have seen can exist in the high- 
est degree without the presence of evil. We are 
too apt to think that virtue which is seen on a 
larger scale is itself magnified. On the other hand 
it may be allowed that evil itself serves as part 
of our discipline : that it gives occasion for the 
exercise of special virtues, and by antagonism calls 
them into play; yet this is only to say that it 
has been so ordered that evil shall in some de- 
gree minister to its own defeat. 

27. And while we grant that in society evil 
may be the occasion of good, it is by no means 
clear that this is true in the individual. As far as 
we can see, the presence of evil, that is the wilful 
transgression of limit as distinguished from the 
original limitation, is neither the occasion, nor 
the condition of good, nor on the narrow stage of 
human life the preliminary to it. The highest 
conception of active virtue — duty — is absolutely 



Sin foreign to our nature. 169 

untouched by it both in its origin and in its chap, il 
fulfilment, even when evil is regarded under the 
extreme form of pain. 

28. Moreover it must be observed that evil, 
while it may be the occasion of good, is never 
transmuted into good. Evil remains evil to the 
last in whatever form it may shew itself. Sin 
remains sin : pain remains pain : ignorance (so 
far as it is culpable) remains ignorance : though 
sin and pain and ignorance may call forth efforts 
of love and fortitude and patience. 

29. Nor can it be said that sin realised, and 
not merely the possibility of sin by the action of 
a free will, is the necessary condition of human 
virtue, and consequently of human happiness. 
For if this were true, then it would follow either 
that evil itself will be eternal, or that human life 
in its true sense will cease to be. Whatever may 
be the function of evil in the social discipline of 
men whose powers are already impaired by sin, 
we have no reason to think that evil could find any 
place for giving occasion to new or higher good in 
a society of men animated by those active and 
personal virtues which have been seen to be 
wholly independent of it (§§ 25, 27) ; not to speak 
of the possibility of other forms of virtuous 



170 Sin foreign to our nature. 

character inconceivable in our present mixed state ; 
for the permanence of the antitypes or perfections 
of our present virtues in another state by no 
means excludes the possibility of the existence of 
other virtues as yet unknown, which may come 
into play from the manifestations of new relations 
between ourselves or of ourselves to other intelli- 
gent beings. 

30. It follows then that sin — moral evil as 
involving the action of will — is in fact something 
wholly foreign to human nature : that in its essen- 
tial character it remains always evil even when 
it is the occasion of good : that it is not a lower 
form of goodness or a necessary condition for its 
exercise, but the conscious transgression of limit : 
that in the individual it leads to no good : that 
even in society at large its disciplinary power only 
effects by sacrifice and imperfectly what the ob- 
servance of the true bounds of nature would effect 
perfectly. It is then a foreign element in our 
nature, and absolutely abhorrent from our proper 
destiny. But it is also, as far as reason can trace, 
permanent in its issues. If therefore a belief in 
personal immortality be held on any grounds 
except those furnished by the Gospel, it must be 
accompanied by an awful sense of the consequences 
of past offences. 



Suffering no expiation. 171 

31. It is this fact which gives to the idea chap. n. 
of sin its most terrible significance. As far as 

we can conceive by the help of reason the effects 
of every action must be infinite, and in regard to 
the agent (whatever they may be to others) cor- 
responding to and like the action. But all sin (as 
such) necessarily involves the idea of suffering to 
the person who commits it ; for selfishness, the 
final element of sin, is the contrary of love, and 
therefore when set against Infinite Love must 
bring the misery of unavailing desire and isolation. 
Hence punishment (for all consequences must at 
last be referred to the Will of the Personal 
Creator), or (in another light) suffering as the 
natural consequence of selfishness, must exist as 
long as sin exists ; and so in any particular case 
the past sin must still work its full effect in sepa- 
rating the sinner from God without end, unless 
some new power be interposed. 

32. For it must be noticed that suffering has 
in itself no power or tendency to remove or 
expiate sin, the consequences of which are best 
conceived as evolved (so to speak) naturally and 
centring in the changed character of the guilty, 
and not imposed externally according to any fixed 
standard. Nor again has it in itself any power 
to produce repentance, by which in the intercourse 



172 Conflict of Instinct 

chap. ii. of man and man the effects of wrong-doing, 
as far as their mutual relations are concerned, 
may be removed. But even in this latter case no 
repentance can cancel the consequences of the 
wrong action, either without the doer or within 
him. These throughout life and (as far as we can 
see) beyond it are inwrought into the world and 
into his nature. Future punishment is a conclu- 
sion of reason, if we grant the future continuance 
of our personality. The mystery which reason 
cannot of itself apprehend is that this punish- 
ment can be stayed. Thus if we approach the 
subject from this side ii is the forgiveness, or 
rather the 'washing away 5 of sins and not their 
punishment, which is the real subject of Revela- 
tion. If on the other hand we confine our view 
to this life, the idea of a Supreme Being tempering 
suffering with a view to repentance answers to an 
instinct of man and not to any logical process; 
and Scripture first teaches us to believe that the 
instinct is true. 

33. For just as there is an instinct within us 
which claims the inheritance of a future life, so 
we feel that after sin repentance is still possible 
and efficacious, and that our Heavenly Father can 
do away our sins. But Reason which deserted us 
before equally deserts us now. It tells us from 



and Reason. 



173 



the observation of what we see around and from chap. ii. 
the conception which we are forced to make of 
the dependence of the future on the past, that 
we must be for ever, in relation to God, what 
we are, and bear about with us the scars and 
wounds which sin has inflicted upon us. 

34. Here again the fact of the Resurrection 
meets our doubts with a new Revelation. If 
we look at our Lord simply as He was seen out- 
wardly, He bore in Himself all the consequences 

of sin. ( He was tempted in all points like as we Hebr> j v> 
'are' except by personal sin. He took our flesh 15 - 
with its liabilities to hunger, and fatigue, and pain 
upon Him : He shared the emotions of anger, and 
sorrow, and affection: He bore death with its 
most terrible accompaniments, the last issue of 
sin, and that sense of utter isolation from God Matt 
which is its complete punishment. Whatever xxvn - 46 - 
sin could work He took upon Himself ; and when 
all was ended God raised Him up ' for our justifi- 
' cation/ and the Lord Jesus bore our human 
nature, over which sin had no longer power, to 
the immediate presence of the Father. 

35. But it will be said that the Lord s suffer- 
ings were not the result (as ours are) of personal 
sin, and consequently that we can draw no 



174 The Resurrection in connexion 

chap. ii. comfort from His triumph over death. To this 
objection it is in part an answer to reply that the 
sufferings of Christ were as though they were due 
to Himself, and that not by a fiction, but by His 
real assumption of human nature. How this 
could be in regard to the more general conse- 
quences of sin, as want or grief, is sufficiently 
intelligible from the fact that He was truly man. 
But how He could take sin upon Him is a mys- 
tery which we cannot solve, though in fact it is 
only a mystery of the same kind as His ' becoming 

John i. 14. 'flesh' (comp. § 38). Yet even here so much at 
least we can see, that in the Agony and on the 
Cross He suffered, yet with an intensity which we 
cannot appreciate, even as those do who bear the 

Heb. v. 7. consequences of personal sin. ' He offered up 
' prayers and supplications with strong crying and 
' tears unto Him that was able to save Him from 
' death, and was heard in that He feared/ 

36. The complete answer lies somewhat 
deeper, as has been already indicated, in the 
recognition of our Lord's Divine Person. It 
is impossible to understand the Resurrection 
completely apart from the Incarnation. It may 
indeed be said that the Resurrection is the 
historic seal of the Incarnation, which remains for 
ever a mystery removed from all witness. And 



with the forgiveness of Sin. 175 

it was in this sense that the first teachers of chap. ii. 
Christianity understood and interpreted it. After 
the Resurrection, as we have seen (i. §§ 56 ff.), 
they saw in Christ a Saviour of boundless power. 
His Life and Death were contemplated in their 
atoning virtue : His Name was given as that 
whereby men might be saved : in Him was Life. 
The contrast between that which was appre- 
hended, if with the deepest reverence we may so 
speak, as personal discipline and redeeming power, 
was placed in its broadest light. ( It became' God Heb. ii. 
' to make Him perfect through suffering/ and 9 ' 10 * 
even thus ' He tasted death for every man/ He 
was ' declared to be the Son of God with power, Bom. i. 4. 
' according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resur- 
' rection from the dead/ And ' though He were Heb. v. 8, 
'a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things 
' which He suffered ; and being made perfect, He 
' became the author of eternal salvation unto all 
' them that obey Him/ 

37. Apart from this faith in the Divinity of 
Christ, His Resurrection loses its highest signifi- 
cance. It has in itself and absolutely no direct 
and immediate connexion with ourselves. It is 
an isolated incident in the history of mankind, 
glorious and full of hope but not the new birth of 
humanity. It answers to that view of the Lord 



176 Hoiu the Resurrection of Christ 

chap. ii. which represents Him as a Teacher simply, and 

does not, according to the apostolic pattern, bring 

out into chief prominence what He did and what 

He was. If Christ was only man, such as we are 

in nature, then His triumph over death is no 

Gospel for those who are bowed down with the 

John xiv. weight of guilt. In Him we can feel that ( the 
30 

' Prince of this world when he came had nothing :' 
Death could not hold Him. For ourselves, we 
Luke X xiii. ' receive' in corruption 'the due reward of our 
41, ' deeds : but this man hath done nothing amiss/ 

38. On such a theory no hope like that of 
St Paul could repose. But once introduce the 
belief in Christ's divine nature, and His Death 
and Resurrection are no longer of the individual 
but of the race. Nor in doing this are we taking 
refuge in an arbitrary assumption to help our 
argument. On the contrary, we simply repeat 
the interpretation which the Apostles placed on 
the whole work of the Saviour. It was on this 
belief that the Church was founded and built up. 
The belief was not indeed always drawn out with 
exact precision, yet it was always implied in the 
relation which the believer was supposed to hold 
to God in Christ. The formula of Baptism, which 
has never changed, is unintelligible without it. 
The Eucharist is emptied of the blessing which 



includes ours. 



Ill 



every age has sought in that Holy Sacrament, if chap, il 
it be taken away. 

39. If Christ took our nature upon Him (as 

we believe) by an act of love, it was not that of 

one but of all. He was not one man only among 

men, but in Him all humanity was gathered up. 

And thus now as at all time mankind are (so 

to speak) organically united with Him. His acts 

are in a true sense our acts, so far as we realise the 

union : His death is our death : His Resurrection, 

our Resurrection. Nothing can be plainer than 

the assertion of this doctrine. Our ' bodies are l Cor. vi. 

15 

'members of Christ;' and conversely a Christian 
society is ' a body of Christ/ ' I have been,' St 1 Cor. xii. 
Paul says, ' crucified with Christ/ If we died q^I. ii. 20. 
'with Christ,' he writes to the Romans, 'we be- 
'lieve that we shall also live with Him... Reckon 
' ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but 
' living unto God in Christ J esus/ And yet more 
plainly, ' When we were dead in sins [God] quick- Eph. ii. 5, 
' ened us together with Christ, and raised us 6 * 
'up together, and made us sit together in the 
' heavenly realm in Christ Jesus.' ' In whom also Col. ii. 11, 
' ye were circumcised with the circumcision made 
'without hands, in putting off the body of the 
' sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ ; 
' buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye 
W. R. 12 



178 The personal significance 

chap. ii. ' were raised with Him through faith in the opera- 
' tion of God, who raised Him from the dead.' So 

l Pet. i. 3. again St Peter speaks of God ' who begat us 

' again to a living hope through the resurrection 

'of Jesus Christ from the dead;' and his final 

l Pet. v. salutation is e Peace be with you all who are in 
14 . 

' Christ J esus.' 

40. The ground of these and similar state- 
ments is found in the words of our Lord, which 
first receive through them their full significance. 
John xv. 'Abide in me and I in you... I am the Vine; ye 
' are the branches. He that abideth in me and I 
' in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; for 
' apart from me ye can do nothing/ And again, 
in His last great prayer for His disciples, He says : 
John xvii. ' For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also 
' may be sanctified in truth. Neither pray I for 
< these alone, but for them also which believe on 
'me through their word, that they all may be 
' one ; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, 
'that they also may be in Us... I in them, and 
' Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect into 
' one.' 

41. The full doctrine of the Resurrection can- 
not be understood without constant reference to 
these deeper revelations of Christ's Person; nor 



of the Resurrection of the Body. 179 

again is the Apostolic doctrine of the Person of chap. ii. 
Christ intelligible without the light of the glorious 
manifestations of Himself which He made to His 
disciples after He was risen from the dead. But 
it is not our object now to follow out the mutual 
relations of these two elements of our Creed, or to 
trace them both back to the Incarnation. It is 
enough to have indicated in what way we can 
conceive that the efficacy of the Resurrection is 
extended to those for whom Christ died; and 
having done this we may next notice how the 
teaching of the Resurrection on the dignity of 
the body tends to explain the relation of the 
individual self to the world. 

42. The noblest of the ancient moralists 
looked upon man's body as a hopeless burden and 
fatal hindrance to the soul ; and in this they 
have been followed by the noblest non- Christian 
moralists in every age. The famous thanksgiving 
of Plotinus that ' he was not tied to an immortal 
'body' expresses the common feeling of all who 
have not felt the power of the Resurrection. But 
Christianity transfigures what philosophy would 
destroy. It shews that the corruption by which 
we are weighed down does not belong to our 
proper nature, and is not necessarily bound up 
with it for ever. It lays open with a deeper and 

12—2 



180 The moral significance 

chap. ii. more searching criticism than a system of morality 
could direct, the internal struggles to which the 
'flesh' must give occasion, and the inevitable de- 
feats which we must suffer in our efforts towards 
the divine life. Plato does not describe more 
sadly than St Paul the afflictions by which we are 

Phil.iii.2l. beset while yet oppressed by' the body of humi- 
' liation.' Or to take an example from a different 
sect and age, M. Aurelius does not express more 
keenly than St John a sense of the evils of the 
present life. But there is an immeasurable chasm 
between the Apostles and Platonists or Stoics. 
e We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being 

2 Cor. v. 4. ' burdened/ St Paul writes : ' not for that we would 
' be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality 
' may be swallowed up by life/ The better change 
for which he longed was not the destruction but 

Phil. iii.21. the ennobling of his body, so that it might 'be 
'fashioned like unto [Christ's] body of glory, ac- 
' cording to the working whereby He is able even to 
' subdue all things unto Himself.' And the power 
by which this transformation should be effected 
was the simple contemplation of Christ in His 
essential majesty. Nay, in some sense the change 
is already begun on earth, so far as that we can 
look forward with full hope to its accomplish- 

2 Cor. iii. ment ; for ' we all, with open face beholding as in 
' a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into 



of the Resurrection of the Body. 181 

' the same image from glory to glory.' e Beloved, chap. ii. 
' now are we the sons of God/ such are St John's l John iii. 

2 

words, c and it doth not yet appear what we shall 
"be: but we know that, when He shall appear, 
' we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as 
'He is! 

43. In a word our present body is as the 
seed of our future body. The one rises as naturally 
from the other as the flower from the germ. ' It 1 Cor. xv. 
'is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorrup- 
' tion : it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory : 
( it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power : it 
f is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual 
f body.' We cannot, indeed, form any conception 
of the change which shall take place, except so 
far as it is shewn to us in the Person of the Lord. 
Its fulfilment is in another state, and our thoughts 
are bound by this state. But there is nothing 
against reason in the analogy. Every change of 
life which we can observe now must be from one 
material form to another equally falling under our 
senses ; but such a change may help us to under- 
stand how a form at present sensible may pass 
through a great crisis into another, which is an 
expression of the same law of life, though our 
present senses cannot naturally take cognisance 
of it (supr. § 7). If the analogy were to explain 



182 



The moral significance 



chap. ii. the passage of man from an existence of one kind 
(limited by a body) to an existence of another 
kind (unlimited by a body), it would then be 
false ; but as it is, it illustrates by a vivid figure 
the perpetuity of our bodily life, as proved in the 
Resurrection of Christ. 

44. The moral significance of such a doctrine 
as the Resurrection of the body cannot be over- 
rated. Both personally and socially it places the 
sanctions if not the foundations of morality on 
a new ground. Each sin against the body is no 
longer a stain on that which is itself doomed to 
perish, but a defilement of that which is con- 
secrated to an eternal life. To injure another, is 
to injure one with whom we are bound by the 
closest ties through a common fellowship in 

l Cor. vi. Christ. ' The body is not for fornication, but for 
' the Lord ; and the Lord for the body. And God 
' both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us 
' by His power. Know you not that your bodies 

Eph.iv.25. c are the members of Christ V 1 Speak every man 
' truth with his neighbour : for we are members one 
' of another/ Each Christian society is ' a body of 
' Christ/ of which the members are charged with 
various functions; and these 'bodies' again are 
' members' of other ' bodies' wider and greater, and 
these at last 'members' of that universal Church 



of the Resurrection of the Body, 183 

which is the ' fulness of Christ/ its heavenly chap. ii. 
Head. 



45. In this way the doctrine of the Resur- 
rection turned into a reality the exquisite myth 
of Plato, in which he represented tyrants and org ' 
great men waiting for their final sentence from 
the judges of Hades, with their bodies scarred and 
wounded by lust and passion and cruelty. And at 
the same time the notion of civic union in which 
lay so much of the strength and virtue of classical 
life, is freed from the dangers of party and class 
and extended to the utmost limits of a human 
brotherhood. The earliest religious instinct of 
men taught them to regard each class, each guild, 
each city, each state, as standing in a corporate 
connexion with some particular deity, and en- 
joying his protection: Christianity satisfies the 
instinct, and harmonises the idea of a special 
relationship to a Divine Lord with that of catholic 
union in Him. It gives the largest range to the 
sympathies and obligations of men at the very 
time when it lays the greatest weight on the 
distinct importance and eternal issues of every 
isolated human action. 



46. The perfect reconciliation of the claims 
and duties of the individual and of the society 



184 The doctrine of the Resurrection 

chap. ii. is no less characteristic of the teaching of Chris- 
tianity than the hallowing (so to speak) of the 
mutual relationship of soul and body ; and both 
doctrines alike find their historical basis and the 
pledge of their realisation in the Resurrection. 
In prse-Christian times the individual was either 
sacrificed to the state, or contemplated wholly 
apart from it. The Platonist, in theory, regarded 
the man in a perfect society as simply living for 
it, and having independently no personal worth. 
The Stoic stood apart in proud loneliness, and 
looked on the turmoil of statesmanship and war 
with the stern indifference of despair or resig- 
nation. In practice both were more or less un- 
faithful to their creed. Socrates found problems 
of life which were so absorbing that till he had 
solved these, he affirmed that he could not inter- 
fere with politics. M. Aurelius, while he steeled 
himself against the future by steadfastly affirming 
the existence of a fatal cycle of human destinies, 
yet laboured with a faithful will to discharge the 
offices of the empire. But neither had any prin- 
ciple to justify the combination of the conflicting 
elements of action and thought. Nature only 
was stronger than logic. But the Apostles could 
declare that the sanctity of the man rests on the 
same fact as the sanctity of the society : that the 
dignity of personal action is not in conflict, but 



in relation to our view of Nature, 185 

in absolute harmony, with that of social action : chap. ii. 
that duties to self and to others are simply dif- 
ferent expressions of the same belief in one abso- 
lute unity. No power which has ever effectually 
stirred men to heroism or self-devotion is lost, 
but all are seen in one source. 

47. The glorious view which is thus opened 
of the one life 'fulfilled in many ways' which 
animates mankind, potentially at least, does not 
exhaust the prospect which Christianity offers to 
the eye of faith. Glimpses are given of a yet 
wider harmony and a vaster change. Reference 
has been made already to the passages in which 
the apostolic writings notice the fellowship of 
nature in the blessings of Redemption (i. § 1). It 
is evident from our ignorance of the forces at 
work in the outer world, of which we can ob- 
serve only some effects according to our limited 
powers of perception, that we are quite unable 
to form any notion of ' a new heaven and a new 
' earth/ Yet the fact of the Resurrection of the 
body suggests more forcibly the literal truth of 
that 'restitution of all things' which was an- Actsiii.2l. 
nounced from the first by St Peter. The enno- 
bling of our material organisation contains, as 
it were, the promise of a more complete transfi- 
guration of Nature. It is possible that the change 



186 Summary. 

chap. ii. lies nearer to us than we are apt to imagine. It 
may perhaps be the case that what appear to us 
to be imperfections and evils in the physical or 
animal world may derive the character which 
we attribute to them from the incompleteness of 
our own faculties ; and that this transfiguration 
(relative to us) may lie within us and not with- 
out (comp. § 23) \ 

48. Whether this view is true or not it con- 
tains an important element of truth which is 
commonly neglected. What we call 'laws of 
'nature' are, as has been seen (Intr. § 8), no- 
thing more than laws of our present observation 
of nature. They are a resultant, so to speak, of 
some unknown force without and our own powers 
of sensation and thought. The permanence of 
the law depends on the permanence of these two 
elements : if either is changed the resultant is 
also changed. If then our bodily powers are 
transfigured, as we see in the Resurrection of the 
Lord, our powers of observation and the limitations 
(as of space or time and the like) according to 
which we class phenomena, will undergo a pro- 
portionate change. Thus for us the 'law' will 

1 This thought, I now find, has been admirably worked out 
by Mr Hinton, whose Life and Letters is full of illustrations of 
the argument which I have suggested. 



Summary, 187 

be changed while the power whose working we chap, il 

notice and describe by it is itself unchanged. 

But still there is no abruptness, no arbitrary 

revolution, in this new aspect of Nature. The 

new law must be conceived as springing out of our 

new powers, just as the present law springs from 

our present powers, when they are turned to the 

objects which fall under them. If our present 

body is the germ of that which will be, so is the 

present law of that which will hereafter regulate 

our perceptions. Thus to the Christian the laws 

of Nature are not laws only, but prophecies. In 

the light of the Resurrection they are symbols 

of something broader and more glorious beyond 

them. They do not confine hope but guide it. 

49. The line of thought which has been just 
opened leads to the Christian solution — as far as 
a solution is possible — of the last question which 
arises out of the simplest views of life, our rela- 
tion to the world; but the fuller discussion of 
this must be reserved for a separate section. 
Meanwhile we have gained some insight into the 
doctrinal significance of the Resurrection in rela- 
tion to the fulness of our future personal exist- 
ence and to our hope of restoration before God. 
It has been seen that our present self is essen- 
tially twofold; and that we cannot in any way 



188 Summary. 

conceive that we can remain the same if either 
of the elements of which it is made up wants 
its proper representative. The doctrine of the 
' immortality of the soul' is therefore wholly insuffi- 
cient to satisfy that desire for a life hereafter for 
which man naturally craves. In confirmation of 
this conclusion it has been shewn that Aristotle 
and Plato, while regarding the subject from very 
different points of view, equally indicate that no 
arguments of pure reason can establish the future 
personal existence of the soul, as a conscious con- 
tinuance of our present existence. Aristotle de- 
nies the conclusion on the strength of a direct 
analysis : Plato clothes his instinctive hope in the 
form of a story, confessing, as it were, that his 
logical process fails him. Yet further, the argu- 
ments which point forward, point backward also, 
and thus fail to establish the conscious depend- 
ence of the future on the present. Introduce the 
belief in the Resurrection and each difficulty 
disappears. In the Person of the Lord we see 
how we can hereafter be the same and yet indefi- 
nitely ennobled : how our souls and bodies may 
be for ever united, so that the individual self 
remains, while the body is transformed by a glo- 
rious change. 

50. In the next place it has been shewn that 



Summary, 189 

while the possibility of sin is necessarily included chap, il 
in the existence of a free finite will, actual sin 
is wholly alien from the perfection of man's 
nature : that in itself and in the individual sin is 
inherently and immutably bad, though it may 
give occasion to good by antagonism: and that 
while it is such it must bring with it suffering 
which has no virtue to remove sin or the conse- 
quences of sin, of which it is itself one. In the 
way of nature then we cannot see how the evil of 
which we are conscious can ever cease to work out 
torment, though at the same time we instinctively 
turn to God as a Father ready to forgive and 
also (but how we know not) wash away sin. Again 
in this aspect the Resurrection presents to us 
the fulfilment of man's triumph in Christ over 
the issues of sin, which culminate in death. But 
here the full significance of the Resurrection and 
our personal share in it is seen to be bound up 
with the Apostolic teaching on the Person of 
Christ as unfolded in His Life and Ascension, on 
which the Church was founded, and in which we 
find all our hopes fulfilled, in virtue of a fellow- 
ship potential for the race and actual by faith for 
the individual. ' In Christ' we can stand without 
fear in the very presence of God. 

51. Further we have been led to notice some 



190 Summary. 

chap. ii. of the moral consequences of a belief in the Resur- 
rection: how it reveals a majesty in the body 
which philosophers have denied, and the conse- 
quent importance of every human action : how it 
hallows with a new sanction the idea of society 
at the same time and in the same way as it raises 
the dignity of the individual : how it harmonizes, 
by the faith in the gathering together of all 
humanity in Christ, claims which before were 
thought to be contradictory in their origin and in 
their fulfilment : how finally it casts a light over 
the destiny of the world and helps us to under- 
stand how our perception of nature will be indefi- 
nitely raised, even if nature itself is unchanged, 
by the ennobling of our own faculties and the re- 
moval or proportionate transformation of those 
limitations by which they are at present con- 
fined. 

It remains to consider more in detail some of 
these thoughts as illustrating what may be called 
the social aspects of the Resurrection, so far as it 
contains a revelation of our relation to the world 
around us, and of the character of that Church 
which is the divine witness and embodiment of 
its truth. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE RESURRECTION AND THE CHURCH. 

Willst du ins Unendliche schreiten, 

Geh nur im Endlichen nach alien Seiten. 

GOETHE. 

1. TN the preceding chapters the Resurrection chap. hi. 

has been viewed in two main aspects. At 
first it was contemplated as a fact, standing in the 
centre of the development of human life, and add- 
ing a new element to the sum of the records of 
human experience. It was then contemplated as 
an idea, harmonizing conflicting instincts of man's 
nature and lifting him into a real communion 
with a nobler order of beings by an abiding fel- 
lowship with the unseen. So far the Gospel of 
the Resurrection vindicates its claim to a true 
historic basis and a moral fitness for meeting the 
essential needs of men. But it has a yet wider 
application. It offers a new foundation for social 
union. It is not only a message of salvation to 



192 The Resurrection in relation to the Church. 

chap. in. the individual : it is also the pledge of a divine 
life to the Church. The promise of Redemption, 
symbolised by the deliverance from Egypt, pre- 
figured by the types of the law, illustrated by the 
teaching of the Prophets, was the vital bond of 
the people of Israel ; and no less the accomplish- 
ment of Redemption, shewn in the Resurrection, 
the Ascension, and the consequent Mission of the 
Comforter, is the spring of life in the Christian 
Body. In the Church the fact of the Resurrec- 
tion, so to speak, is perpetuated ; and the idea of 
the Resurrection is realised. On the one hand, 
the development of the Church witnesses to the 
consecration of every power of man to a divine 
use and marks the potential transfiguration of 
every variety of individual or national character, 
as parts of a sublimer whole : and on the other 
hand it claims the possession of this transforming 
energy in virtue of the working of a Risen Saviour 
through its outward institutions. Briefly it is 
inherently historical and sacramental ; and the 
clue to the apprehension of its history and its 
sacraments lies in the Resurrection. 

2. The detailed examination of the insti- 
tutions of the Church in the light of the Resurrec- 
tion is at present impossible (comp. I. § 61). It 
will be sufficient to consider how the fact and the 



The Resurrection in relation to the Church. 193 



idea of the Resurrection affect the general con- chap. hi. 
ception and working of the Christian Society. 
Nor can the consideration be regarded as super- 
fluous at the present time. Some strange for- 
getfulness of truth must prevail when it can be 
possible for philosophical writers to stigmatize 
Christianity as 'selfish.' The very same Gospel 
which sets before the single believer the glorious 
issue of life at the same time and by the same 
message binds up his hope with that of every 
other believer, and more than that with the 
destiny of the whole world. It is only by neg- 
lecting the Resurrection that the Christian can be 
isolated (comp. i. § 1). 

3. The first announcement of the Gospel 
connects it with the establishment of a society. 
It is emphatically ' the Gospel of the Kingdom/ Matt. iv. 
'The Kingdom of heaven is at hand' was equally Matt. xi. 
the message of the Baptist and of Christ Himself ^ ke 
at the beginning of His teaching. At one time 
this Kingdom is contemplated as still future, at 
another as already present. We are taught to pray 
for its 'coming/ and encouraged to press as it 
were by force and claim by violent effort a share 
in its immediate blessings. Its origin, its growth, Matt. xiii. 
the manner of its reception, the perils to which it 
would be exposed, the variety of elements which 

W. R. 13 



194 The Church a Kingdom. 

chap. in. it would include, are portrayed under a rich 

Luke xxii. variety of parables. ' I appoint unto you that 
29 . " 

'ye may eat and drink at my table in my King- 

'dom' were among the last words which the Lord 
addressed to His disciples ; and after His Resur- 
rection, during the forty days, He spoke ' of the 
' things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.' The 
idea which was thus prominent during the minis- 
try of Christ was included in the groundwork of 
the Apostolic preaching. The first address of St 
Peter on the day of Pentecost declared ' J esus to 
' be the Lord and Christ' Whom God had promised 
' to raise up to sit on the throne of David.' The 
first record of a mission beyond the limits of Ju- 
daea describes Philip 'preaching the things con- 
' ceming the Kingdom of God.' The definite charge 
which was brought against St Paul when he first 
Acts xvii. preached in Europe was that he did ' contrary to 
xyL°21^' ' the decrees of Csesar, saying that there is another 
' King, one Jesus.' 

4. It is unnecessary to consider the various 
misconceptions to which this proclamation of 
Christ's 'Kingdom' was exposed. Even to the 
time of the last manifestation of the Lord on 
earth before the Ascension, the Apostles seem to 
Actsi. 3, 6. have confounded 'the Kingdom of God' with that 
which was its figure, ' the Kingdom of Israel.' But 



The Church a Kingdom. 195 

there is not the least trace that the Christian idea chap. in. 
of a heavenly kingdom was ever mixed up with 
direct political aims. The very bitterness with 
which the Jewish zealots at the time of their 
rising persecuted the Christians, is a sufficient 
proof that these 'children of the Kingdom 5 were 
as far as possible removed from schemes of tem- 
poral ambition. The Christian belief did away 
with the bitterness of civil bondage, and substi- 
tuted a higher hope for the dreams of national 
enthusiasm. But none the less the Kingdom 
whose coming believers were charged to hasten, 
was regarded as a society truly answering to the 
name, though its establishment was referred to 
the action of Divine Providence, and not to human 
design. The kingdoms of the earth were types of 
this kingdom which should be on earth though 
not of the earth. In other words the glorious 
society in which the Gospel was to find its out- 
ward embodiment would have a Sovereign, of 
whose Personal Rule His subjects would be con- 
scious and by Whose Will they would be guided, 
an organisation, by which the relative functions 
and duties and stations of those included within 
it would be defined and sustained, a common 
principle of action, and common rights of citizen- 
ship. This was the earliest form under which the 
establishment of a Christendom, at first militant 

13—2 



196 The Church a Temple. 

chap. in. and then triumphant (though this distinction was 
but faintly perceived), was realised. The old 
Kingdom of God whose history could be traced in 
the Old Testament furnished the language in 
which it was described, and the wide-felt presence 
of the Roman Empire gave distinctness to the 
broader traits of universal dominion and unity. 

5. But the idea of a Kingdom was not the 
only one under which the Church — the whole 
Matt. xvi. society of Christians — was regarded. ' Thou art 

"I Q 

' Peter {Petros)' our Lord said, in answer to the 
confession which the great Apostle had made, 
f and on this Rock (Petra, the living rock, from 
' which the Petros is hewn or taken) I will build 
' my Church.' This then is a second figure : the 
church is a building, or more specially a house 
or temple. And it is worthy of notice that 
St Peter, in his first Epistle, brings out this con- 

1 Pet. ii. 4, ception into the clearest light. ' Ye,' he writes, 
'coming to the Lord, a living stone,... as living 
' stones are built up a spiritual house,' of which 
c the stone which the builders disallowed is made 
' the head of the corner.' And St Paul yet more 
in detail follows out the structure of this Chris- 
tian sanctuary. Reckoning up the blessings of 
the Gentile converts, he tells them that they are 

19L.22. now ' fellow-citizens of the saints. . .since they have 



The Church a Temple. 197 

6 been built upon the foundation of the apostles chap. hi. 
' and prophets, J esus Christ Himself being the chief 
'corner-stone, in whom every part of the build- 
' ing, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy 
' temple in the Lord ; in which ye also are builded 
' together for an habitation of God in the Spirit/ 
It is however to be observed that the same image 
which is used of the society is used also of the 
individuals. We are ' Christ's house/ i God's build- Heb. iii. 6; 
' ing/ ( the temple of the living God/ where the 9 ; 
words are used of the many to whom or in whose \§° x ' V1 * 
person the Apostle is speaking ; and on the other 
hand he asks, ' Know ye not that your body is ' (in 
each separate case ; or better perhaps, according 
to another reading, 'your bodies are') 'a temple 
' of the Holy Spirit which is in you V 

6. This figure of a Temple has several points 
in common with that of a Kingdom, from which 
it is distinguished in its essential scope. In both 
there is the design of the whole to which the 
parts are subordinated, a variety of office and po- 
sition in the constituent elements, a central power 
on which the stability of all depends. But there 
is no necessary connexion between the Temple 
and Him Who dwells within it, such as is implied 
in the reciprocal duties of governor and governed. 
The house may be defiled or desolated, while the 



198 The Church a Body. 

chap. in. occupant seeks some other abode ; but the King 

is such in virtue of his special sovereignty. Briefly 

the Temple prefigures the Church in its outward 

fabric, in its splendour, in the vastness of its plan, 

in the variety of materials of which it is con- 

1 Cor. iii. structed, in the consecration of all which men 
10 £f 

have to God by men and so through God by His 
Presence. It is the material as contrasted with 
the moral type of the Christian society. 

7. But there is yet another image under 
which St Paul presents the relation of the Church 
to God. It is not only His Kingdom, and the 
Temple of the Holy Spirit : it is also the Body of 
Christ. Our Lord indicated this vital connexion 
between Himself and His disciples in the parable 
of the Vine and the branches ; and after His 
Death and Resurrection the truth thus signified 
grew plainer and more prominent. It was seen 
that Christians had not only severally works to 
do, but different works : they were felt to be not 
branches merely, but members of Him from whom 
they drew their life. So it is that this idea of the 
Church as the body of Christ includes in itself 
both the idea of the Kingdom and that of the 
Temple. Sovereignty and organisation are im- 
plied in the Headship of Christ, and in the 
mutual action and dependence of the members : 



The images of the Church, 199 

external structure and multiformity and consecra- chap. hi. 
tion, in the framework of the body, and in the 
variety of its parts, and in the relation of the 
whole to the vital Spirit by which it is informed. 
But it also adds much to the ideas which it thus 
harmonises. The connexion of life is substituted 
for that of government or occupancy. We live in 
Christ, and He in us. We grow in Him ; and He 
is seen more and more perfectly in the society of 
Christians. The government of a society shews 
something of the character of the ruler : the fabric 
of a building something of our conception of him 
for whom we rear it ; but the body reveals in part 
the very person of him whose it is, and is the 
organism by which alone his acts can be mani- 
fested or fulfilled. 

8. We are not perhaps justified in pressing 
the details of these three images in an examina- 
tion of the general characteristics of the Christian 
Church. The images indeed are by no means 
always kept distinct. Language borrowed from 
one is used in the development of another. 'Ye 1 Pet. ii.5, 
( ...are built up a spiritual house... ye are a chosen 
' generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a 
' peculiar people.' The gifts which Christ has 
variously distributed among men are 'for the Eph.iv.12. 
' building up of His body.' ' Know ye not that i5 j 19. 



200 The images of the Church. 

chap. in. 'your bodies are members of Christ ?.. .Know ye 
' not that your body is (or bodies are) a temple of 
'the Holy Spirit which is in you V One relation 
runs into the other, just as in all other cases 
we stand in threefold connexion with Him who 
created, redeemed and sanctified us. But without 
insisting on the minute interpretation of the 
figures so much at least is evident, that they mark 
the Church as ruled by a personal Governor, pos- 
sessed of an outward organisation, inspired by an 
immediate divine life. What light then, it may 
be asked, does the Resurrection throw upon the 
nature of this Kingdom of God, this Temple of 
the Holy Spirit, this Body of Christ, for it is with 
this subject only that we are immediately con- 
cerned. 

John xviii. Q t < My Kingdom/ our Lord said, in answer to 
36, 37. 

Pilate, ' is not of this world/ And yet He added 
presently, ' Thou sayest [rightly] that I am King. 
' For this purpose have I been born, and for this 
'cause have I come into the world that I may 
'bear witness to the Truth. Every one who is 
' of the Truth heareth my voice/ The Resurrec- 
tion was the passage to the proper realm of truth 
— of that which really is ; and in the contempla- 
tion of the Resurrection the Christian learns some- 
thing of things as they are in the sight of God. 



A spiritual realm opened to us. 201 

The Resurrection is a new birth : to realise it as chap. hi. 
an actual fact with the consequences which it in- 
volves, is to share in it ; and thus we gain the full 
meaning of Christ's words to the Teacher who 
seemed to boast of the insight into spiritual things 
which his training had given him : ' Verily, verily, John iii. 3. 
' I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he 
'cannot see the kingdom of God' — he will have 
no faculties to apprehend that which it contains. 
Plato, in one of his grandest myths, has repre- Plat, 
sented the progress of unembodied spirits in the p/*247.' 
train of the gods in the face of all that is. When 
they fall to earth, as their powers fail them in 
their course, their destiny is determined by the 
clearness and extent of the impressions which they 
retain. These recollections form the basis of all 
that men know of truth. The Christian reverses 
the idea. He is going to a kingdom of absolute 
Truth, and is not fallen from one. The Resurrec- 
tion is the bridge by which the passage to the 
unseen is effected. Resting on that he looks out 
to the heavenly state of which he is a citizen : he 
feels the constraining force of his allegiance to a 
spiritual King: he apprehends something of the 
divine hierarchy, to a fellowship with which he is 
admitted, and according to whose laws he works : 
he sees the enemies against whom he has to con- 
tend, ' principalities, and powers, and rulers of the Eph.vi. 12. 



202 The Church as a Kingdom. 

chap. in. ' darkness of the world, and spiritual wickedness 
' in the heavenly realm/ The order, the scene, 
the persons, the objects of this spiritual kingdom, 
answer to what we see now on earth, but no more. 
A new heaven and a new earth await the mani- 
festation of Christ, even as men themselves will 
be transfigured by His presence (n. §§ 47, 48). 

10. It is obvious that there is great danger 
in dwelling exclusively on this royal aspect of the 
Church. It is likely that in such a case either the 
relations and duties of men on earth will be neg- 
lected and disparaged, or conflicts and differences 
here will be absolutely confounded with those which 
are essentially spiritual. History furnishes many 
examples of both errors. 'The kingdom of God' 
has been the watchword equally of those who have 
cast aside the restraints and claims of life, and of 
those who have sought to mould its form by the 
most merciless fanaticism. And it was perhaps 
in part due to their vivid anticipation of Christ's 
Return with kingly majesty that the early Chris- 
tians took so little interest in civil affairs. Yet this 
cannot justly be turned to their reproach ; for it 
must be remembered that in the Roman Empire 
politics, as we understand the word, had no place ; 
and Christianity, as such, has no special relation 
to any one form of government. In the long run 



The manifold building of the Church. 203 

it tends to certain social results, but in virtue of chap. hi. 
its universality it is capable of the highest per- 
sonal development under any outward circum- 
stances. 

11. But the Church is not a Kingdom only. 
It is a structure complex and multiform. The 
society as a whole is a dwelling-place of the 
Holy Spirit. It is reared from age to age by the 
accumulated efforts of all who serve God. Each l Cor. iii. 

12. 

brings that which he has of special worth and it is 
built into the fabric. All work is not the same 
work, yet all which can bear the presence of God 
is equally employed in some part or other of the 
spiritual ' building/ If the notion of a Kingdom 
suggests the essential majesty of the Church, this 
of a Temple brings out the human interest of its 
progress. So it was with the structure which 
suggested the image of St Paul. 'Forty and six John ii. 20. 
' years was this Temple in building/ and it carried 
with its foundations the memories of ten cen- 
turies. So it is with our Christian Temples 
which combine and hallow the thoughts and gifts 
of successive ages. And the spiritual reality 
answers to the material figure. The Church is 
itself the record of its history : it is a monument 
and a shrine. Each race, each nation, each 
century, nay each faithful workman, has left 



204 The manifold building of the Church, 

chap. in. some mark upon it. Time gradually harmonises 
parts which once seemed incongruous. Additions 
which were at first thought to mar the symmetry 
of the plan are felt at a later period to increase 
its richness. One Spirit hallows all, and that 
Spirit is a gift consequent on the Resurrection. 
The local withdrawal of Christ from among men 
in the one limited form in which they had known 
Him, and the transfiguration of that form ' by the 
' glory of the Father/ were the conditions through 
which they could realise His unseen presence 
John xvi. through the Spirit. ' It is expedient for you that 
' I go away/ the Lord said to His disciples on the 
eve of His Departure ; £ for if I go not away, the 
' Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, 
'I will send Him unto you/ He first wakened 
their souls to the perception of His new Life, and 
then removed all which might still seem to con- 
John xx. fine its manifestation. £ Cling not to me/ was the 
17 

Rom. vi. 4. l° vm g reproof to her whose eyes He had opened 
by a familiar word, ' for I am not yet ascended 
'to my Father/ No love, however true, which 
sought to keep Him as He was seen on earth, 
could know the fulness of Christ's majesty. The 
Ascension was the necessary completion of His 
work. So only could men trust in His abiding 
power ever testing, and receiving and consecrat- 
ing the many offerings of every generation, and 



The Church the visible Body of Christ 205 

using all in due measure for the service of that chap. hi. 
society in which He was pleased to dwell. 

12. So far we have touched upon those 
aspects of the Church which represent its eternal 
constitution and its temporal growth. The Re- 
surrection gives force and distinctness to both. 
But it is more especially in the last figure of the 
Church, as the Body of Christ, that it finds its 
peculiar application. The idea which this figure 
expresses springs indeed properly out of the belief 
in a Risen Saviour.' Anticipations of the idea are 
found in the later discourses of Christ which have 
been already noticed ; and elsewhere He spoke of 
His continual presence among men in the per- 
sons of the poor and of His ministers. But these 
and other intimations of like kind fall far short of 
the full grandeur of the conception which St Paul 
lays open. Nor can it be without significance 
that the revelation is made to us through him 

who was resolved not to know 'a Christ according 2 Cor. v. 16. 
' to the flesh/ and to whom the Lord was first ma- 
nifested in the majesty of His divine glory. The 
Church is (if we may so speak) the visible Body 
of the Risen Christ : it is through this that He 
still works, in this that He still lives. 

13. Three principal relations are included in 



206 Christianity in relation to Paganism. 

chap. in. this conception of the Church as the Body of 
Christ. Christians as such are essentially united 
together in virtue of then relation to Christ, and 
that irrespective of any feeling or will of their own. 
Next they are bound to one another by the obli- 
gation of mutual offices, the fulfilment of which is 
necessary for the well-being of the whole. And 
lastly, all alike derive their life from their Head 
Who is in heaven. The Body is one : it is multi- 
form ; and it is quickened by a power which is not 
of itself but from above. Now this element in its 
constitution, now that, is brought into prominence, 
but none can be neglected if we wish to form au 
adequate notion of its power and functions. For 
the present it will be enough to consider a little 
more exactly the principle of unity, and that in 
which the unity consists, the principle of life. 
The multiformity of Christendom will be noticed 
sufficiently while we endeavour to establish its 
unity. 

14. Before doing this however it may be well 
to notice how the fundamental idea of Christianity 
as the basis of a society is related to the corre- 
sponding ideas of Judaism and Paganism. It has 
been frequently argued that modern civilisation 
has lost some essential element of good which 
ancient civilisation possessed. It has been said 



Christianity in relation to Paganism, 207 

that we are less self-reliant ' than the nations of chap. hi. 
classical antiquity : less conscious of a Divine Pre- 
sence than the Jews. Without pausing to inquire 
whether this is so in fact or not we may be 
contented to ask whether there is anything in 
Christianity itself which tends to produce such a 
result : whether the evil or loss if it be actual is 
also necessary. 

15. The noblest lesson of Paganism is with- 
out doubt the revelation which it makes to us of 
the inherent dignity of human nature: of the 
powers of endurance and self-denial and faith : of 
the perceptions of beauty and truth : by which 
the soul is at all times capable of asserting its 
divine relationship. The work of Paganism was, 
we are led to believe, the complete exhibition of 
these natural faculties, in their strength and in 
their weakness. The nobility of man as man and 
as standing apart from God is that portion of its 
teaching by which it still appeals most forcibly to 
the sympathies of our own time. There is a dark 
side to the picture which we are apt to forget, but 
still there is an abiding grace and manliness in 
classical life as it is seen in history and literature 
and art. Unaffected interest in every human 
feeling, manysided culture, stern and indomitable 
will, claim our respect and awaken in us respon- 



208 Christianity in relation to Paganism. 

chap. in. sive efforts. But so far as we admire Paganism 
there is nothing in Christianity antagonistic to it. 
Paganism closed its eyes to suffering and death. 
Christianity takes account of the whole nature of 
man, of its good and its evil, and justifies in the 
face of the contradictions of life the instinct which 
affirms its dignity. It looks death face to face 
not as an inevitable necessity but as a final conse- 
quence of sin, and yet realises even now more than 
a victory. It lays bare, what each one must feel 
for himself, our natural infirmity, and yet ratifies 
the bold words of the heathen poet that ' men are 

Acts xvii. ' God's offspring' and sets before believers as the 

28 

2 Pet. i. 4. arm 0 f their faith a more complete ' fellowship in 
' the divine nature.' It represents life as a struggle, 
and yet as a struggle only to realise the blessings 
which are already won for man and within his 
reach. It claims his entire homage, but at the 
same time it consecrates to its own service the 
natural exercise of every power which he pos- 
sesses, and the fulfilment of every situation in 
which he is placed. It looks upon the world as 
suffering with him, but it regards it no less as 
destined to share his glorious future. It differs 
from Paganism as a whole differs from a part. 
It takes up into itself and harmonises with the 
rest of our experience the isolated truths to which 
Paganism bears witness. 



The principle of unity. 209 

16. This is equally true of the relation in chap. hi. 
which Christianity stands to Judaism. If Pa- 
ganism is a testimony to the self-assertion and 
independence of man, Judaism is the confession of 
his dependence. In the first we contemplate man 
in himself : in the other man as the creature of 
God. In Paganism, at least when it reached its 
full development, an appeal is made to a com- 
mon conscience, or to necessary laws of thought, 
or to history : in J udaism the binding message is 
'the Word of the Lord.' In the one men obey, 
because they recognise the essential justice of the 
command or submit to a stronger force : in the 
other the statutes of right are not primarily based 
on intuitions or suggested by experience, but em- 
bodied in a Law which is absolute, not in virtue 
of its inherent character but as coming from Je- 
hovah. The one, if we look to the principle by 
which it lived, is a witness to human freedom : the 
other to Divine sovereignty. And as the principles 
which they respectively embody are eternal, so are 
the spirit of Paganism and the spirit of Judaism. 
The history of Christianity is little more than the 
history of the approximate harmonization of the 
two. Now the solution turns in this direction 
and now in that, according as the spirit of Greece 
or of Eome prevails — the theology of Athanasius 
or of Augustine — but apostolic Christianity recog- 

W. R. 14 



210 The principle of unity 

chap. in. nises and hallows both elements. The coming of 
the Lord invests humanity, even as it is, with a 
more awful majesty than man could have claimed 
for himself; and at the same time comiects the 
realisation of that majesty with the direct revela- 
tion of the Divine Will. Paganism proclaims the 
grandeur of man : J udaism the supremacy of God. 
Christianity accepts the antithesis and vindicates 
by the message of the Resurrection the grandeur 
of man in and through God. 

17. This then is the work of Christianity, 
first to establish the common dignity of men as 
men, and to place on a sure basis all purely human 
virtues: and next to connect the life of men 
with its source and consummation and bring it 
into fellowship with God. Both these results are 
grounded on the historic facts of the Gospel. 
The unity of the Christian Society, to which 
potentially all men belong, depends not on any 
personal feeling but on a common relation in 
which men as belonging to the society stand to 
God. And the reality of this divine fellowship is 
at once the seal of the nobility of man and the 
pledge of the possibility of its final perfection. 



1 Cor. xii. 18. 'As the body is one,' St Paul writes, 

12 13 

' and hath many members, and all the members 



in Christianity. 211 

( of the 1 body being many are one body : so also is chap. hi. 
( Christ. For in one Spirit we all were baptized 
c into (i. e. by baptism incorporated in) one body, 
' whether we be J ews or Greeks, whether we be 
'bond or free; and were all made to drink 2 one 
' Spirit/ Here the unity is seen to spring out of 
a definite outward act, and the participation in a 
spiritual blessing consequent upon it. No other 
conditions are added. Yet it must be observed that 
according to the formula which Christ Himself en- 
joined, baptism includes a profession of faith, such 
as has been connected with it in all ages, in which 
the historic facts of the Lord's Life are plainly 
set forth. Hence in another place St Paul says 
more fully : f There is one body, and one Spirit, Eph. iv. 4. 
' even as ye were called in one hope of your calling : 
'one Lord, one faith, one baptism/ The act once 
done brings with it, in virtue of Christ's work, fel- 
lowship with Him, in which lies unity. ' Know ye Rom. vi. 3, 

4. 

' not that so many of us as were baptized into J esus 
' Christ, were baptized into His death ? Therefore 
' we were buried with Him by baptism into death ; 
' that like as Christ was raised up from the dead 
' by the glory of the Father, even so we also should 
' walk in newness of life/ Here the issue is viewed 
from the human side. It is ours to realise in 
action the fulness of the heavenly life of which 

1 Omit one. 2 Omit into. 

14—2 



212 The principle of unity 

chap. in. we are made partakers. Elsewhere it is viewed 
in relation to God, and in this aspect all is accom- 

Eph. ii. 5, plished once for all. ' When we were dead in 
'sins [God] quickened us together with Christ, 
c and raised us up together [with Him] and made 
f us sit together in the heavenly realm in Christ 
' J esus/ 



19. The participation in Christ's Death and 
Resurrection through Baptism is then the final 
condition of unity : to work out the Resurrection 
in life the means and measure of its preservation. 
For unity is not uniformity. Differences of race, 
class, social order obviously have no influence 
upon it. They are of earth only. But more than 
this, it is consistent with serious differences in 
the apprehension of the common faith on which 
it reposes. St Paul naturally insists on the re- 
moval of the partition between Jew and Gentile 

Eph.ii.15* by the Death of Christ, whereby He 'made of 
c twain one new man.' Primarily without doubt he 
regarded the contrast as it was before the Gospel ; 
but it seems equally certain that he included 
within the scope of Christ's reconciliation those 
diversities of opinion by which the Jewish and 

Gal. ii. 7ff. Gentile Churches were separated. The Apostles 
of the circumcision recognised in him the aposto- 
late of the uncircumcision ; and he gladly received 



in Christianity. 213 

from them ' the right hand of fellowship.' The chap. hi. 
divergences of practice between the teachers, and 
of belief to a certain extent between the disciples 
of the two schools, were not sufficient to destroy 
their true unity. Love still found its expression 
among them in acts of charity. It was only Gal. ii. 10. 
when the attempt was made to enforce one partial 
system as universal that the unity of the whole 
was endangered. The first serious effort to esta- 
blish uniformity threatened to end (as it did after 
the time of the Apostles) in a schism. 

20. It may not indeed be a mere fancy to 
regard the manifold appearances of the Lord after 
His Resurrection as prefiguring in some way the 
varieties which should exist in after time in His 
Church. The unity of His Person was not in any 
way impaired, and yet He shewed Himself to His 
disciples in different ' forms.' And it may be still Mark xvi. 

12 

that the faithful eye can see a Body of Christ 
where His Presence is hidden from others. For 
even in the one body, there are many bodies ; 
and as the whole Church is sometimes contem- 
plated in its completeness as distinct from Christ, 
though most closely bound to Him, as His bride ; Eph. v. 27. 

i-i n /"HI 1 c XT ApOC. Xxi. 

so also is the same true of separate Churches. 1 e 2, 9. 

' are a body (not the body) of Christ, and members Lp or " xn ' 

'in particular' St Paul says to the Church of 



214 The principle of life 

chap. in. Corinth. The definite article destroys the force 
of his argument. And so again in his second 

2 Cor. xi. Epistle: 'I espoused you' — the congregation to 
which he is writing — ' to one husband, that I may 
' present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.' Thus 
the whole is not only relatively complete but it is 
made up of parts (so to speak) similar to itself. 
And this is true if we regard even the ultimate 
members of which it is composed. The individual 
Christian — a temple of the Holy Spirit as well as 
a living stone of a more glorious Temple — is like 
the special Church of which he is a member, even 
as this is like that Universal Church in which it 
discharges some special function. 

21. But while the Christian, the separate 
Churches, and the Universal Church have seve- 
rally, in some sense, a completeness in themselves, 
yet their real life is solely in their connexion with 
lCor.xi.3. Christ 'the Head of the man,' and 'the Head of 
Epb'.iv.l6. ' the Church.' From Him flows that energy by 
Col. ii. 19. w j 1 j c j 1 every member is enabled to discharge its 
function effectually and in due proportion to the 
harmonious working of the whole : from Him, 
that power of love by which the several parts are 
fitted and knit together: from Him, that vital 
force by which the multiform body ' increaseth 
'with the increase of God.' Each phase of this 



in Christianity. 215 

divine Life is distinctly marked. 'The bread' — chap. hi. 
the heavenly manna— which I will give/ the Jonn vi.5l. 

Lord said, ' is my flesh, for the life of the world/ John xiv. 

19 

— ' Because I live, ye [my disciples] shall live j onn x i t 

'also' — 'I am the Resurrection and the Life/ 25, 

' Ye died/ St Paul writes to the Colossians, ' and Col. iii. 3, 

' your life hath been hidden with Christ in God ; 

'but when Christ is manifested, our Life, then 

' shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory/ 

' It is no longer I who live/ he says in another Gal. ii. 20. 

place, ' but Christ liveth in me/ ' He that hath l John v. 

12. 

' the Son hath life ; but he that hath not the Son 
' of God hath not life. 5 

22. It is then necessary to bear two things 
in mind in treating of the Unity of the Church. 
The Unity of the whole is consistent with a wide 
variety of parts, each having to a certain degree 
a corresponding unity in itself. And next, the 
essential bond of union is not external but spi- 
ritual : it consists not in one organisation but in 
a common principle of life. Its expression lies in 
a personal relation to Christ and not in any out- 
ward system. Of the life of the Church part is 
open, part is hidden. We can see divisions, dif- 
ferences, limitations ; but all that is eternal and 
infinite in it, all that controls actions which per- 
plex us and harmonizes discords which are un- 



216 Essential unity does not 

chap. in. resolved to our senses, is not to be perceived on 
earth but is with Christ in heaven. 

23. • It follows necessarily from what has been 
said that external, visible, unity is not required 
for the essential unity of the Church. To recur 
to the example which has been already used, the 
congelations of Jewish and Gentile Christians 
were no less One in Christ, though the outward 
fellowship between them was imperfect or wanting : 
their common life lay deeper than the controversies 
which tended to keep them apart. Their 1 isola- 
tion was a proof of imperfection, but not of death. 
What errors are deadly, it does not fall to our 
part to attempt to determine. It is enough to 
observe that differences of opinion which were 
once thought by many to be fatal to unity were 
really consistent with it. The promise of Christ 
does not reach to the unity of the outward fold 
Johns. 16. at any time. 'Other sheep/ He said, 'I have, 
' which are not of this fold : them also I must 
' lead, and they shall hear my voice ; and there • 
• shall become one flock, one shepherd' — one 
flock in however many folds it be gathered, 
because it listens to the voice of the One Shep- 
herd. 



24. If the true unity of the whole Church, 



require external unity. 217 

which is derived from the participation in the chap. hi. 
Spirit of Christ, is compatible with the existence 
of outward divisions on earth, it is no less 
compatible also with the existence of independent 
centres of local and partial authority in its mani- 
fold organisation. Christ Himself is the One 
Head ; and He left no single successor to repre- 
sent in outward form the relation in which He 
stands to the Body. For a time indeed an idea 
seems to have prevailed in one province of Christ- 
endom that the office of Christ (if we may so 
speak) and not of the Apostles only was to be 
perpetuated. The Jewish Bishops of Jerusalem, 
who were taken as long as might be from the 
family of the Lord, were held by many to be (even 
though they did not claim the title themselves) 
His successors. They were, according to the title 
claimed for them, ' bishops of bishops.' Their 
authority as far as can be learnt now was sup- 
posed to extend over the whole world and not 
to be confined to a single diocese or district. They 
symbolised the idea of an earthly kingdom, which 
was characteristic of the party who professed to 
maintain their opinions. It would be idle to 
speculate on the form which this belief might 
have taken if Jerusalem had not been destroyed. 
As it is, it is impossible not to feel that the effect 
of the desolation of 'the Holy City' must have 



218 The end of the world. 

chap. in. been to chasten and purify (as soon as they could 
bear the discipline) those who had hoped to mould 
the Christian Church after the pattern of Judaism. 
The conception of unity based on a historic and 
divine succession in the religious centre of the 
world was proved to be no part of the true idea 
of the Church. The thoughts of men were turned 
with a deeper faith to that ' Jerusalem which is 
' above/ to which from the first St Paul had di- 
rected them. 

25. These considerations tend to remove a 
difficulty which has been often felt in dealing 
with the interpretation of the New Testament. 
The Apostles, it is urged, looked for an immediate 
' end of the world/ and the event shews that they 
were in error. Yet to any one who really pene- 
trates below the surface of the first age it will be 
equally evident that 'the end of the world' was 
expected and that it really came. It is possible 
that the Apostles themselves, like the prophets in 
earlier times, did not realise the mode in which 
their expectations would be fulfilled : it is certain 
that many who heard them affixed false and chi- 
merical interpretations to their teaching; but in 
the light of Christian history their written words 
were fully accomplished. The destruction of Je- 
rusalem is ' the meeting of the ages/ the death of 



How external unity was aimed at. 219 

the 'old world' and the birth of the 'new world/ chap. in. 
The Lord ' came' when the acknowledged centre 
of c the people of God' was desolated. A spiritual 
and universal Presence was substituted for a 
material and local Presence. The lesson of the 
Resurrection replaced the lesson of the Law. A 
fresh 'age' {won) began its course destined itself 
to culminate in another 'coming' of which the 
first was a living figure. In a religious aspect all 
things were essentially become new. Christianity 
had first vindicated its inheritance in the past, 
and then in due time it asserted its independence. 

26. The outward unity which was aimed at 
in the early Jewish Church was based upon a 
religious idea. The outward unity which after- 
wards grew up round the Roman Church sprang 
from political influences. The two systems are 
essentially distinct in their origin, though finally 
they can be traced in theory to the same prin- 
ciples. The Roman system became in the end 
what the Jewish system was from the first, but 
with one remarkable difference. The priesthood 
which was in both cases the visible representative 
and instrument of the theocracy was limited in 
Judaism to a distinct family succession: in Ro- 
manism the succession was spiritual and effect- 
ually disconnected from hereditary ties. In the 



220 The extent of permissible variation 

chap. in. Christian Church of J erusalem the fleshly descent 
from a sacred stock was observed for several gene- 
rations, but there is no trace of a similar custom 
at Rome. The idea of spiritual supremacy seems 
indeed absolutely to exclude it. But it must be 
enough to have indicated the external contrast 
between systems essentially similar. This is not 
the place to follow out the steps of their parallel 
but converse development. Nor can we dwell on 
the marvellous process by which the Roman 
Church was prepared for the preservation of 
Christianity on the dissolution of the Empire. It 
would be foreign to our purpose to trace the steps 
by which the bishop of the imperial city received 
one by one the prerogatives of sovereignty, and in 
due time seated himself on the vacant throne of 
the Caesars. It would be equally out of place to 
attempt any estimate of the strength which the 
mediaeval Church thus received for the execution 
of the work with which it was charged. The facts 
are of vast significance, and occupy so large a 
space in the history of Christendom that they may 
not lightly be passed over. They formed, as we 
may well believe, part of the providential scheme 
of the historical growth of the Church. But the 
unity to which they led was no necessary part of 
the constitution of the Church. It answered to 
the one Empire of the first age, and not to the 



not to be determined antecedently. 221 

many kingdoms of the maturer life of Europe, chap. in. 
It supplied a bond between the disorganised na- 
tions till the states-system into which they were 
formed was firmly consolidated. Under its pro- 
tection the Romanic and German elements were 
allowed to gather strength till they were ready 
to fulfil their independent office. But without 
dwelling upon this temporal function of the ex- 
ternal unity of the Christian society we can at 
least see from the fall of its prototype after the 
Jewish Return (i. §§ 27 f.) that the spiritual 
unity of the Church is independent of it. The 
outward unity arose from historic causes : it was 
broken by historic causes. No external organisa- 
tion can supersede the original relation in which 
the Society stands to its Founder. The gift of 
the Holy Spirit was the outward sign of the ele- 
vation of humanity to glory at the right hand of 
God : the sharing in that gift is the life of the 
Church : the absolute oneness of the source from 
which the gift flows is the ground of essential 
unity in the congregations of which the Church is 
composed. 

27. But though the principle of the unity of 
the Christian Church is spiritual and not neces- 
sarily connected with uniformity of constitution or 
even with intercommunion, it by no means follows 



222 Possible divisions illustrated 

chap. in. that the outward organisation of the whole of the 
constituent Churches is a matter of indifference. 
On the contrary the direct teaching of the Resur- 
rection points to the inherent connexion between 
the outward and the spiritual, the organisation 
and the life. The range of variation in the con- 
stitution of the Christian societies must be limited 
by their fitness to embody the fundamental ideas 
of Christianity. Of this fitness history on a large 
scale gives the final judgment. Whatever may 
be the immediate result of controversy, however 
false may be the issues on which it is decided, 
however blinding the influences by which its pro- 
gress has been modified, in the end it is seen in 
its true light, and the final judgment which is 
ratified by general practice or belief is commonly 
the true one. In this sense history is the arbiter 
not of truth but of the right embodiment of truth. 
The early records of the Church are little more 
than the records of conflicts which once seemed 
doubtful; but in each case that which had in it 
the element of permanence lived on, and Catho- 
licity stood in full strength against the broken 
forms of partial and erroneous teachings. 

28. It is possible perhaps to extend this view 
of a historic development of Christianity to later 
ages. It seems difficult to believe that the Greek 



by the history of the Jewish Church. 223 

and Latin Churches include the only two great chap. in. 
aspects of Christian truth, so that it remains for 
us at present only to recur to the principles on 
which they were built, and to strive vainly to re- 
produce in another period a transcript of the past. 
The vast advances of civilisation, the further 
growth of national life, the wider range of know- 
ledge, which brings with it the recognition of the 
importance of special views, seem to force upon 
us the conviction that the various Churches of 
modern times fulfil under the changed conditions 
of society the same functions as could be discharged 
in earlier times by a single Church. Even in 
the history of Judaism something of the same 
kind may be noticed. In no way, as we should 
judge, could the possibility of variation, and still 
more of division be excluded with greater certainty 
than by the institutions of the J ewish Church, and 
yet in that Church outward union was soon broken, 
and the rupture if not expressly sanctioned was 
in the end implicitly accepted by the divine pro- 
phets of Israel. Israel was 'made to sin/ and 
yet even so while their primal sin remained they 
were not abandoned by God. The Temple — the 
permanent (i. § 25) symbol of unity — was hardly 
completed, before a large part of the nation was 
shut out from the use of it. The political and 
religious schism of which Israel was a monument 



224 History of the Jewish Church. 

chap. in. was not passed over without rebuke, but in spite 
of that a distinct spiritual work was carried on in 
Israel, not less blessed by outward signs than that 
which was simultaneously accomplished in Judah. 
At a later time the office which was discharged by 
the Jews of the Dispersion, and specially by the 
Alexandrine Jews, in modifying and extending 
their traditional faith, was still more manifestly 
recognised by God in the providential office which 
He allowed it to fulfil for the spread of Chris- 
tianity. Here as elsewhere it appears as if the 
sins and wilfulness of men gave occasion to the 
accomplishment of the Divine plans. These in- 
deed were not dependent on such evils for their 
fulfilment; but yet it seems as if God were pleased 
to use our imperfections for the complete exhi- 
bition of His will. The rebellion of Israel, the 
schism of Alexandria, the permanent settlement 
of Jews throughout the East and West which in- 
volved a violation of large parts of the Mosaic 
law, were in themselves evils, and had their spring 
in selfishness and disobedience, but none the less 
they served to work out a vast counsel, which, as 
far as we can see, could not otherwise have been 
perfected. Thus in the history of that earlier king- 
dom of God, which was essentially outward, we are 
taught by special examples not to judge every- 
thing by our own standard of unity. And at least 



Variation no sanction of Sectarianism. 225 

no argument can be drawn from the circumstances chap. hi. 
which attend the rise of any great movement 
against the importance of the part which it may 
have to discharge in the furtherance of the pur- 
poses of God. 

29. But it may be said that such a view 
sanctions sectarianism. If we are to suppose that 
the form of the Christian Church in each nation 
will (within certain limits) embody the common 
peculiarities of national character, just as on a 
larger scale the Greek Church is Orthodox and 
the Latin Church Catholic, differences will still 
exist in the body thus formed. Each nation will 
include men most widely at variance in their 
religious tendencies. Are they then to be held 
blameless if they seek to attach themselves to a 
communion which expresses most clearly their 
own views ? The national character is not reflected 
in them ; and the same general principle which 
justifies the formation of a separate national 
Church may be appealed to in support of an in- 
definite number of subordinate associations. 

30. Disregarding for the present all con- 
siderations of ecclesiastical organisation, it may be 
sufficient for us to answer to such a line of reason- 

w. R. 15 



226 The admission of variation 

chap. in. ing that it applies equally well to all social com- 
binations. No one will deny that there is a 
tendency in every nation towards the establish- 
ment of the government best suited to it. This 
tendency which may be latent in the mass, though 
really there, will be developed most strongly in 
those who are the true leaders of popular thought. 
And though various obstacles may hinder or 
modify the embodiment of the idea which they 
represent, in the end it finds an adequate expres- 
sion. But even then individuals in the state 
will find themselves at variance with the consti- 
tution. This divergence however will not release 
them from the duties of loyal obedience, nor yet 
deprive the government of its right to be regarded 
as the representative of the national feelings. The 
state though made up of individuals has an exist- 
ence of its own. The individual will exercise his 
full influence in preparing for further changes, 
but meanwhile the whole claims a sacrifice of the 
part. It is so also in the case of a national Church. 
No general principles can be laid down to justify 
a schism or a revolution. The future alone can 
decide on the sufficiency of the alleged causes 
from which they arose. And in many cases the 
issue which is sanctioned by experience may have 
been occasioned though not caused by selfish 
motives. 



no sanction of Sectarianism. 227 

31. In the history of the Church no less than chap. hi. 
in the history of nations we have to deal with 
humanity in which sin is active already. It would 

be easy to shew that among perfect men every 
blessing would arise naturally and completely 
without conflict or division, which in our present 
state is realised through these exceptional means 
in pain and at best partially. But as it is, conflict 
and sorrow are the means by which the powers of 
men, material and moral, are braced and purified. 
The existence of distinct nations with rival in- 
terests is practically necessary for the full de- 
velopment of those special powers in each which 
holds out the surest promise of a final union 
of men. And so the antagonism of separate 
societies of Christians serves not as the best, 
but as the most appropriate, discipline for bring- 
ing out the manifold applications and capacities 
of the one Gospel. 

32. History has in fact sanctioned divisions 
in the Christian Church whatever we may think 
of the events which first led to them, or of the 
actors by whom they were made. However deeply 
we may deplore the loss of that outward fellow- 
ship which would, if it could have been preserved, 
have increased a thousandfold the power of the 
Church upon the world ; yet it is impossible not 

15—2 



228 Progress implies antagonism 

chap. m. to feel that God has revealed His purposes and 
furthered His work not only in spite of, but 
even through the separate societies which have 
severally appropriated this or that part of the whole 
truth as the characteristic object of their devout 
study. And even without regarding the lessons 
of the past it is hard to see how the fulness of 
Christianity could have been manifested among 
men otherwise than by antagonism and conflict- 
Antagonism is in our present imperfect condition 
the preliminary to our apprehension of anything 
which is not itself absolutely bounded by our 
finite powers. Every spiritual truth can be fol- 
lowed out to a final antithesis ; and this antithesis 
finds its most complete expression in societies 
rather than in individuals. 

33. The same law which holds in all other 
fields of human activity, holds also in the noblest. 
The condition of advance in the comprehension 
of the whole Gospel is the special mastery through 
the circumstances of life of its constituent parts. 
Progress implies a separate development of powers. 
The tendency to division grows as knowledge 
widens. There was a time when all nature 
seemed to lie within the range of one mind. 
Deeper inquiry has shewn that each fragment 
includes phenomena which may occupy a life- 



and individuality. 229 

time. And so it is in religion. The complexity chap. hi. 
of modern society, which is in part a creation of 
Christianity, lays before us endless problems of 
right and duty, and opens countless avenues for 
the entrance of truth into the manifold life of 
men which could not have been presented if all 
the conditions of existence had been similar. As 
a necessary consequence of this, each nation, each 
association, each man has, in proportion to the 
distinctness of character, a tendency to do one 
thing ; and the tendency to do it springs (as a 
general rule and upon a large scale) from the 
fitness for doing it. There is thus, in virtue of 
the universality of Christianity, a constant ap- 
proximation towards the complete manifestation 
of its power. And when each age and race and 
individual has fulfilled its proper function — and 
so far as it fulfils it — a glorious harmony must 
result, which is true Catholicity. 

34. The recognition of some such historic 
development of Christianity, varying according to 
the wants of particular ages or races, as belonging 
to its present form, restores to the divided Churches 
a true unity. One of the earliest images under 
which the unity of Christendom was described 
was that of many streams flowing from one source. 
The longer the streams flow, the greater will be 



230 The Unity of the Church 

chap. in. their divergence ; but the divergence is due to 
progress and does not in any way destroy the 
original unity of the waters which pass along the 
various courses. But the streams will not always 
be divided. They start from one source and they 
end in one ocean. They have been united out- 
wardly, and they will again be united. Mean- 
while the fashion of their currents is moulded by 
the country through which they pass, and this in 
turn furnishes the peculiar elements which they 
bear down to their common resting-place to form 
the foundations of a world to come. 

35. There is indeed much of human selfish- 
ness in the present administration and conduct of 
Christian societies, even as there was in their 
establishment and organisation. It is not argued 
that the divisions as we see them are not de- 
formed by much that is unchristian. They are a 
witness to human imperfection ; but at the same 
time they shew how the failings of man are over- 
ruled to the furtherance of his highest destinies. 
They belong to an order of things in which sin is 
realised and not only possible (n. §§ 23 fF.); but 
they are made an occasion during this brief time 
of trial for the salutary discipline and fruitful de- 
velopment of powers which cannot yet be harmoni- 
ously concentrated on one end. On the whole a 



seen in its historical Development. 231 

fictitious unity is more destructive of vital energy chap. hi. 
than partial dismemberment, for it tends to weaken 
the striving after essential unity. The disruption 
of the visible Church was a calamity which still 
impedes its action, though even thus, as by the 
fate of Jerusalem, we are taught to look above 
for the source of the one life by which its parts 
are seen to be inspired. The petty rivalries of 
the day are an evil, though they are an evil which 
may be borne. But the line of thought which 
has been opened leads to a trustful and reasonable 
view of Christendom. It enables us to regard the 
progress of the Church as we regard the progress 
of civil society (§ 38). It encourages us to extend 
our sympathies beyond the limits of our own com- 
munion : to look forth without despair upon a 
world, in part hardly reached by the very sound 
of Christ's message, in part divided as to the 
exact meaning of it. It teaches us to watch with 
patience the slow and painful and wavering ad- 
vance of truth through long ages, as falling in 
with what we observe in nature of the enormous 
scale and gradual progress of the accomplishment 
of the operations of God (i. §§ 2, 3). The example 
of the Jewish Church, the legible chronicle of past 
centuries, shews that under circumstances similar 
to those which exist now, though simpler and 
narrower, He wrought out His work and used 



232 The Development 

chap. in. the fruits of man's wilfulness and one-sidedness 
for the accomplishment of His designs. So we 
trust it will be now. and in confidence we can 
fulfil the task which we find ready to our hands, 
without distrusting the means placed within our 
reach for furthering the coming of the Kingdom 
of Christ. 

36. Some law of development Christianity 
must have. The Christianity of the first agre, 
regarded as a whole, is not the Christianity of 
any later age ; and no view of the Church can 
be complete or satisfactory which does not include 
and explain the principle of the change. It is 
impossible for a Christian of to-day to date the 
descent of his faith from any critical epoch in 
modern times, and neglect ten or fifteen centuries 
as a mere parenthesis in the history of the Ca- 
tholic Church. All the past is included in the 
present. The Reformation was the fruit of ages 
gone by no less than the germ which should 
spring to maturity in ages to come. There can 
be no suspension in the fulfilment of the divine 
promise, however varied may be the forms under 
which it is accomplished. The leaven still works 
in the manifold mass : the seed advances stage by 
stage towards its ripe perfection : the tree grows 
under every change of season and climate, and 



one of organisation. 233 

offers shelter to all who repose beneath its chap. hi. 
branches. Each image under which we are taught 
to contemplate the function of the Church pre- 
sents at once an element of permanence and an 
element of change. There is the essential life 
by which the whole body is quickened, absolutely 
one and immutable, and the organisation which 
the vital force moulds and by which it reveals 
itself, which is mutable and fashioned out of ele- 
ments earthly and transitory. But even so the 
continuity of the organisation is necessary for the 
preservation of the complex life. 

37. The principle of life is one and immutable. 
In this there is no development. The faith which 
is written in the facts of the Gospel, and the im- 
mediate apostolic interpretation of them, admit 
of no necessary and authoritative additions. A 
dogmatic development of Christianity, in the sense 
of an increase of the fundamental doctrines of the 
faith, is foreign to the whole spirit of the apostolic 
writings, and is itself inconceivable without a new 
revelation. Such a development would only take 
place by the addition of new dogmas in virtue of 
the direct action of an adequate power, or by 
deductions from existing dogmas. But both me- 
thods are excluded by the nature of the case. 
Christianity rests essentially on facts. Its elc- 



234 The Development not of 

chap. in. mentary doctrines are presented to us in the 
shape of facts ; and thus, even if any central 
power existed with absolute dogmatic power, new 
facts would be required for the basis of new doc- 
trines, for the Apostles declare with unniistakeable 
distinctness the full significance of the Incarnation 
and the Mission of the Holy Spirit. And again, 
the truths which answer to the facts of the Gospel 
belong in themselves to a higher form of exist- 
ence, and cannot be brought within the domain 
of our powers of reasoning. Every process which 
we pursue involves necessarily at each step limita- 
tions (as, for example, of time and space) to which 
the Divine Being is not subject. Every conclu- 
sion, therefore, which we form, so far as it is 
presented as an absolute truth, must have in it 
an element of error. Indeed, on reflection, it 
cannot but seem infinitely presumptuous that we 
should venture to speculate on that of which, even 
in its simplest form, we can give no positive con- 
ception. Nor is there any characteristic by which 
the apostolic writings are more clearly distin- 
guished from the greatest writings of masters of 
theology than the absence in them of secondary 
deductions from the principles which they enforce. 
In this respect they differ equally from the meta- 
physical and speculative theology of the East, and 
from the moral and legal theology of the West. 



Doctrine absolutely. 235 

They contain a record of facts, and an immediate chap. hi. 
application of the facts, but no more : life and 
not thought is the object to which they primarily 
minister, and so they minister (as no other 
writings ever could do) to thought through life. 
They set forth with simple distinctness that a fact 
or truth is, but not how it is or why it is. What 
there is more than this in later speculations, how- 
ever beautiful and however precious it may be, is 
wholly different in kind. From the first the 
difference has been instinctively felt. The records 
of the most critical struggle for the truth in the 
history of the Church shew how widespread was 
the unwillingness to introduce into the historic 
creed of Catholic Christendom a single word which 
was not found in the Scriptures though it was the 
necessary exponent of their teaching in opposition 
to error: the language of the noblest champion 
of orthodoxy shews how far he was willing to 
dispense with the acceptance of a word when the 
fact which it imperfectly expressed was admitted. 

38. But while the principle of life, the record 
of the facts of the Gospel, remains the same, the 
form in which it is embodied may change. Thus 
we naturally turn to history as shewing the con- 
ditions and ruling the mode of the development 
of Christianity. Here we can see on a large 



236 The Development corresponds 

chap. in. scale how the same truths are apprehended by 
different races, how they are embodied under 
different circumstances and according to different 
modes of thought, how they conquer, and array 
themselves in the spoils of the conquered. No 
one would deny that in successive ages special 
aspects or parts of Truth are brought out. The 
general outline of the history, including both the 
history of dogma and the history of practice, has 
a necessary connexion with that of civil and intel- 
lectual history. The one is, so to speak, a func- 
tion of the other. And it follows that as we can 
trace in the general condition of man a constant 
advance towards a true fulfilment of the capabili- 
ties of his nature, so we may hope for a corre- 
sponding progress in the Church, towards that 
ideal which is held before us in Scripture as its 
proper consummation. Advance in the first case 
is not only consistent with wars, revolutions, iso- 
lated action, but (as far as we can judge) is even 
dependent on these which we are tempted to call 
hindrances in its way. And it may be so with 
Christianity. The divisions and rivalries and 
heresies and schisms by which the Church is torn 
may be means towards the fulfilment of its office. 
As we look back we can scarcely doubt that it 
is so. The storm no less than the sunshine is 
needed that the rainbow, the visible token of 



to the progress of Society. 237 

God's covenant with man, may be seen upon the chap. in. 
cloud. 



39. It is indeed impossible to regard the 
Church as a body without recognising the neces- 
sity of a constant change in its organisation. 
Growth itself is change ; and in proportion as the 
life of the body is complex we may expect the 
forms in which it is clothed to be varied. There 
are times when the individual is forgotten in the 
society, and conversely when the society is for- 
gotten in the individual. In the apostolic view 
of the future of Christianity there is a distinct 
recognition of a progressive work in both. The 
life of the Church is continuous even as the life 
of the man ; but with this difference (as we have 
seen, § 20), that this life is manifested not in one 
outward embodiment, but in many, which are 
severally similar to the whole which they combine 
to form. 



40. It is no part of our task to attempt to 
follow out in detail the various phases of the life 
of the Christian Churches. But it would not be 
difficult to shew that institutions or dogmas have 
wrought a most important work for the cause of 
Christ in one age, which in another have been 
converted into obstacles to the full apprehension 



238 Developments 

chap. in. of the Truth. There is always a great danger 
that that which has been found of critical use at 
one time will be pronounced necessary for all time. 
Mistaken gratitude changes the outward means of 
deliverance into an idol. The organisation through 
which the spirit once worked is reckoned holy, 
even when the spirit has left it. And thus that 
which once was a development of life becomes a 
corruption, not because it has (in every case) 
changed in itself, but because it stands in a different 
relation to the whole. The work of the mediaeval 
Church (for example) required modes of operation 
which could not be retained now without a faith- 
less neglect of the lesson which God has taught 
us in the last four centuries. The same pheno- 
menon meets us at every step in the economy of 
individual life. The seed from which rises the 
fruit-bearing tree, to which the visible society of 
Christendom is likened, gives birth to a thousand 
successive organisations, from the seed-leaf to the 
flower, which fall away when their peculiar office 
is fulfilled. They perish, but their work remains, 
and remains because they perish. 

41. This consideration brings with it the 
answer to a general objection which may be urged 
against the belief in a divine historical develop- 
ment of Christianity. It may be said that the 



often transitional. 239 

development is due to the imperfection of man : chap, iil 
that so far from carrying forward the perception 
of the Truth, he lowers the truth to his own level 
and confines it in a form borrowed from his own 
weakness. The objection is true if it be directed 
to any particular point of the development. The 
Truth itself is infinite, and it is simply because 
the powers of man are imperfect and finite that 
any development is necessary. He can only 
realise step by step, and by successive efforts, 
what is indeed from the beginning 1 . According to 
the position in which he finds himself, he takes 
now this, now that fragment of the whole, because 
it meets his wants. Every embodiment of the 
Truth must be wrought out in this way. And the 
nearest approximation which we can form to the 
complete truth is by the combination of the par- 
tial realisations of it which history records. The 
imperfection of each stage of the development is 
then only perilous when an attempt is made to 
transfer the forms of thought or practice of a parti- 
cular period to another, without any regard to their 
bearing upon the whole life of the time. The 
interpretation of Ecclesiastical history, like the 
interpretation of Scripture, is based upon a pro- 
portion. Neither admits a rigid literalism. The 

1 Augustine's enforcement of this truth in one of his most 
pregnant passages is full of interest : Enarr. in Psalm, xliv. 5. 



240 Scripture the test of Development 

chap. in. training of the child and of the man will be dif- 
ferent, if both are according to the same law ; but 
the man may learn still (if he reads them rightly) 
from the lessons of the child. 

42. It is not denied that there will be a 
tendency in man not only to seize that element 
in the Truth which he himself needs, but also to 
exaggerate its importance, to array it in fancies 
of his own, to transmit his embodiment of it as 
an inviolable heritage to all who shall come after. 
If it were not so, superstition would have no 
vitality. But while we look to history for the 
record of the continuous growth of the Church, 
we carry the Holy Scriptures with us, as the test 
whereby to try the essential value of each de- 
velopment. The history of the Old Covenant is 
enacted afresh in the history of the New. The 
fulness of the apostolic writings has not yet been 
exhausted in the life of eighteen centuries. The 
providence of God is at every stage interpreted by 
His Word. The spirit of the Resurrection tries 
and transfigures each transitory embodiment of 
Truth. 

43. The same test which is applied to the 
past history of the Church, can be applied to the 
present. The vast complexity of modern life, the 



The complexity of the present age, 241 

various degrees of national culture, the broad chap. hi. 
differences between class and class in the same 
nation, set before us simultaneously, so to speak, 
distinct periods of the simpler life of the ancient 
world. We live (and the statement is not a mere 
figure) in the presence of many ages. We cannot be 
surprised then if we see around us many Christian 
societies distinct, and subserving in virtue of their 
distinctness to distinct types of thought and feel- 
ing. Differences which once were found in the 
same external body are now seen embodied in 
separate societies. We lose something by the 
change, but the gain must not be neglected. We 
are led to look for the spiritual basis of unity in- 
stead of reposing in the fact of formal unity. And 
more than this. The full development of each 
part is best secured by independent action. Divi- 
sion (if we regard the imperfection of our nature) 
appears to be the preliminary of that noblest 
catholicity, which will issue from the separate Eph.iv.16. 
fulfilment by each part in due measure of its 
proper function towards the whole. Thus the 
material unity of J udaism is transformed into the 
moral unity of the Apocalypse. The unity which 
was at first spontaneous becomes at last conscious, 
tested in all its elements and made perfect by 
conflict. 



W. R. 



242 The function of National Churches, 

chap. in. 44. It has been urged against this view 
which leads directly to the recognition of national 
Churches as a providential mean towards the com- 
plete exhibition of Christianity, that national 
Churches are 'contradictory to the nature of a 
religious body' and ' opposed to the genius of 
Christianity/ If Christianity were of this world 
only, a simple organisation for social and political 
discipline, the objections would be true. But they 
fail because the Church is a religious body, par- 
tially manifested on earth but drawing its life from 
an unseen source, and one because that source of 
its life is One. In this respect the idea of the 
Church may be compared with the idea of hu- 
manity with which it is potentially commensurate. 
The existence of separate and conflicting nations 
is not destructive of the moral unity of the whole 
body of mankind, but rather on a large view is 
seen to minister to its external realisation in the 
long succession of ages. And so with the Church, 
though in this case the unseen principle of unity 
is far more easily apprehended, the distinct embo- 
diments of partial sections of it tend to bring about 
in the end that complete development which 
will answer to the fulness of its divine life. The 
separate Churches thus become as individual 
members in the larger body, and, like single men 
themselves, contribute by the most distinct pre- 



Churches 'redeem each other! 243 

servation of their individuality to the perfection chap. hi. 
of the whole. In the light of the Resurrection 
all the powers of man in their most free combi- 
nations are capable of transfiguration. 

45. But it will be obvious that this division 
of Churches, like the division of nations, is only a 
transitional phase in the whole history of human- 
ity (comp. § 26). It belongs not to the early but 
to the later stage of its development. Nay rather 
if the history of the ancient people of God may be 
taken as a type of the progress of the new ' world' 
it appears to be the latest stage in the evolution 
of ' the present age' and to precede a more imme- 
diate revelation of the Divine Presence. However 
this may be, the faint recognition of national 
Churches is not a mere 'resource in the face of 
' overwhelming difficulties/ but a testimony to the 
power of Christianity to find for itself new organ- 
isations to meet new phases of society. Mean- 
while we can be content to find in this diversity of 
operations scope for the most devoted energy and 
the firmest faith. It has been nobly said that 
'nations redeem each other/ One supplies that 
which another lacks in moral character and pur- 
pose; and the existence of a deficiency in one 
place is not unfrequently the stimulus and the 
occasion for the display of the corresponding virtue 

16—2 



244 Grounds of hope in the 

chap. in. in another. At least it is evident that we cannot 
understand how with our present powers the full 
grandeur of humanity could be exhibited or deve- 
loped except by the coexistence of many peoples 
distinct and even antagonistic. And that which 
is true of humanity in a political or social aspect 
is true of it also in a religious aspect. Separate 
organisations appear to be as necessary for the 
complete manifestation of the many sides of Chris- 
tian truth in relation to man, as they are con- 
fessedly for the manifestation of national life. 
But we do not rest in the contemplation of a 
divided humanity or of a divided Church. Under 
the varieties of race and character there exist 
tokens of an essential union which may yet be 
realised and towards which the current of events 
is ever turned. There are indications, faint it may 
be and often baffling, of a common life grander 
than the life of men and the life of nations, which 
is struggling to assert its sovereignty. And in the 
Church there is yet more than this, the certainty 
of the presence of a Holy Spirit who ' is able to 
1 subdue all things unto Himself.' But whether 
we look to nations or Churches, it is needful that 
we should pause before we claim to exercise the 
prerogatives of a knowledge which belongs to a 
higher sphere. As citizens and Christians we 
stand in varied relations to a universe of which we 



midst of antagonism. 245 

can see but the least part. This world is not all ; chap. hi. 
and if we look confidently for a unity of the whole, 
we dare not attempt to construct it in imagina- 
tion upon the little field which is open to us. 

46. The forms which present divisions as- 
sume are, it is admitted, and must remain causes 
for the deepest sorrow. Nothing can be more 
grievous than the partial wilfulness with which 
Christian men and Christian societies exalt from 
time to time with an idolatrous devotion special 
fragments of truth, which tend to lose their essen- 
tial character by being isolated. But such reflec- 
tions as have been suggested, while they leave 
the special evils of a divided Christendom just as 
they are, yet enable the devout mind to regard 
them without despair : nay more to regard them, 
as it would regard the disorders of the physical 
world, with quiet confidence and faith. We can- 
not yet see how the whirlwind or the earthquake 
falls in with an infinitely benevolent system of 
nature ; but we do not doubt that it does do so. 
In looking on human life we have even better 
grounds for faith. There we can see faint begin- 
nings of a final harmony, converging tendencies 
towards a divine order, which will embrace all the 
varieties of thought and life in their richest 
fulness. When we see what the belief in Christ 



Conclusion. 



chap. in. and the power of His Resurrection has done, how 
it has interpreted and made its own this and that 
instinctive feeling, how it has found an embodi- 
ment, natural if not complete, under every variety 
of external circumstances, how it includes in it- 
self a principle of unity capable of combining 
whatever there is in these of permanent value, 
we can look out upon the conflict of sects without 
distrust, and look forward to that golden age to 
which and not from which the history of the 
Church advances. 

47. Nothing is more paralysing than a sense 
of isolation : nothing is more cheering than a con- 
sciousness of fellowship in the combined action of 
a great nation or of a great society. Christendom 
is weak not only because it is divided but chiefly 
because each section is enfeebled by a sense of 
the littleness of its power as it measures the tri- 
umphs of Christianity by its own peculiar stand- 
ard. Our strength will be indefinitely increased 
if we believe that God works not only through us 
or in our way and according to our notions, but 
uses us according to the measure of our capacities, 
and others with us in the accomplishment of the 
design of His Love. Every energy will be turned 
to its proper work as our thoughts rest on the 
glory of the Risen Saviour. 



Conclusion. 



247 



48. Wherever we look the first question chap. hi. 
which arises is ever : To what purpose is this 
waste ? On all sides we see a prodigal wealth of 
powers which to us appear to pass away without 
effect, of germs of life which never fulfil what we 
think to be their proper destiny, of beauty which 
gladdens no human eye. In the moral world the 
same mystery recurs. One man out of many, one 
family of many, one nation of many, one world of 
many (if our thoughts dare wander so far), are 
centres of blessings of which all are equally capable 
of sharing, and we cannot trace the law by which 
their influence gradually reaches to the furthest 
limits of being, while we see multitudes perish 
unconscious of their common heritage. All na- 
ture teaches the same lesson. ' We know in part.' 
It is enough. If Christ be risen, in that fact lies 
the pledge of ' the restitution of all things' towards Actsiii.21. 
which men are encouraged to work. 



APPENDIX I. 



ASPECTS OF POSITIVISM IN RELATION 
TO CHRISTIANITY 1 . 



Catechisme Positiviste, ou Sommaire Exposition de la Eeligion 
Universelle. Par Auguste Comte. Paris. 1852. 

Sy steme de Politique Positive, ou Traits de Sociologie Instituant 
la Eeligion de l'Humanite. Par Auguste Comte. Paris. 
1851—1854. 



O religion can fail to be a fruitful subject of appendix 



JLl study : even the rudest reveals something of the 
natural feelings and wants of man which are awakened 
by the experience of life. And exactly as we believe 
Christianity to be the Truth, we shall confidently 
expect to find in it all that is true in the manifold 
expressions of human thought. Thus it has happened 
not unfrequently that independent speculations or 
instinctive aspirations have brought out elements in 
the Gospel which had been before overlooked or set 

1 This Essay originally appeared in the Contemporary 
Revieio. 



6 ovu dypoovures evcreBeire rovro eyu> KarayyeW'j) vfjuv. 

Acts xvii. 23. 



I. 




250 



Aspects of Positivism in 



aside. They were there, and even actively at work, 
but they were not consciously apprehended. And 
so it seems to be now. The religion of Positivism 
is offered as the final result of a profound analysis of 
society and man, and its unquestionable attractive- 
ness to pure and vigorous minds indicates that it 
does meet with some peculiar force present phases of 
thought. Are there not then lessons which we may 
learn from it 1 

While I endeavour to answer this question, I 
shall be content to take Comte's own conclusions, 
without discussing the processes by which he obtains 
them. The strength of the Positivist philosophy lies in 
its method ; the strength of the Positivist religion lies 
in its conception : and the Positivist alone is concerned 
with reconciling the two. That which is at best only 
a hypothesis for the Positivist may prove to be a 
reality for the Christian ; and while I set aside the 
physiological basis of the Positive religion, it need 
scarcely be said that I do not propose to deal with 
the principles of Positivism as furnishing a method 
of philosophy. I desire simply to explain what Comte 
lays down as the essential bases of religion, from an 
exclusively human point of view, and to consider 
whether his exposition throws any light upon neg- 
lected aspects of Christianity. 

But though this is not the place to discuss the 
philosophic aspect of Positivism, one remark is un- 
avoidable. It seems to be generally assumed that 
there is some fundamental antagonism between the 
Positive method and Christianity. Nothing, I be- 
lieve, can be more false. I should even venture to 



Relation to Christianity. 



251 



maintain that the spirit of Positivism is more in appendix 
harmony with a historic religion than that of any 
other system of philosophy. It knows nothing of 
causes, and consequently decides nothing prior to 
observation. It refuses to recognise absolute laws, 
and consequently is always ready to take account of 
new facts. As against a metaphysical theism the 
arguments of Positivists may perhaps avail ; but they 
are inherently powerless against a faith which is 
based, not on subjective theories, but on outward 
events, of which all personal experience and all social 
development furnish the adequate and only conceiv- 
able verification. 

This being so, it is evident that a Positivist in 
philosophy may be a Christian in religion ; and the 
religion constructed on Positivism may, as far as it 
goes, illustrate or confirm the doctrine and consti- 
tution in which the Church has embodied the facts of 
the Gospel. How far this is so is the subject with 
which we have now to deal. And with this problem 
before us, it would be superfluous to criticise the errors 
and misrepresentations — to use no harsher terms — 
with which Comte's religious writings are disfigured. 
He puts them forward so boldly and so frequently, 
that no one moderately conversant with Christianity 
can be misled by them 1 . It is equally unnecessary to 
exhibit his weaknesses. Others, who have dwelt on 
these with more than necessary detail, have paid the 
penalty of becoming blind to what there is really 

1 Something has been said in a former paper on Comte's 
fundamental misconception of the idea of Christianity, Con- 
temporary Beview, vi. pp. 417 ff. 



252 



Aspects of Positivism in 



appendix noble and just in his teaching. And it is with this 
L that we are concerned. A system is formidable, not 
by what there is false in it, but by what there is true 
in it. If then it can be shewn that Christianity assures 
what Positivism promises — if it can be shewn that it 
includes in a fact what Positivism symbolises in a 
conception — if it can be shewn that it carries on to 
the unseen and eternal the ideas which Positivism 
limits to the seen and temporal — we may be sure that 
Positivism will have no lasting religious power, except 
as a transitional preparation for a fuller faith. Comte 
will be one more in the long line of witnesses who 
shew that the soul is naturally Christian 1 . 

II. 

To some however it must seem strange to speak of 
any system as a religion which does not recognise the 
action of a Personal God. For us indeed the idea of 
religion is so naturally connected with that of theology, 

1 In this unconscious prophecy of faith, Comte offers a sin- 
gular parallel to the great poet of the Roman Republic. Both 
were bitterly hostile to the established faith of their countries. 
Both sought to lay in the study of nature the firm basis of 
human life and hope. Both were profoundly impressed with 
the sense of the unity of the world. But, in spite of the simi- 
larity of the moral position of the two teachers, we feel that 
they are separated by more than eighteen Christian centuries. 
Lucretius sought in the explanation of the origin of things that 
confidence which Comte looks for in the observation of their 
being. The one feels his way towards the intellectual concep- 
tion of a harmony of nature ; the other, towards the moral 
law of the discipline of life. Both, as it seems, were heralds 
of a crisis of thought. To both the Resurrection is the com- 
plete fulfilment of aspiration and teaching. 



Relation to Christianity. 253 

that it requires a serious effort to separate the two. appendix 
A perfect religion must indeed take account of three lm 
elements — the individual, the world, and God ; but 
an imperfect religion can exist, if the individual 
recognises without him an infinite power, contem- 
plated as personal, and such as to claim the complete 
devotion of the worshipper. The Great Being of 
Comte — the sum of all humanity, past present and 
future — practically satisfies the condition of infinity ; 
and it satisfies the condition of personality by the 
concession which is made to each worshipper to re- 
present it to himself under some definite historical 
or imaginary type. In fact, we may be driven to ask 
ourselves whether the Being which some Christians 
worship is less truly an abstraction than the idealised 
humanity of the Positivists. 

But while we must never leave out of sight, in 
dealing with the Religion of Positivism, the funda- 
mental defect which mars its completeness, it is 
necessary to remember that this is not the only form 
in which a religion can be founded upon a dualism, 
though it is that most repugnant to our instincts. 
Dr Newman, in a striking passage of his 1 Apologia 1 ,' 
has sketched the permanent influence of evangelical 
teaching upon him, which consisted in ' confirming 
'me/ he says, 'in my mistrust of the reality of 
'material phenomena and making me rest in the 
' thought of two, and two only, supreme and luminously 
' self-evident beings — myself and my Creator.' Thus, 

1 P. 59. It is however difficult to judge whether Dr Newman 
himself holds this to be the final analysis of the elements of 
religion. 



254 Aspects of Positivism in 

appendix as Conite leaves out the Deity from his elementary 
L conceptions, another school leaves out the world. A 
little reflection will shew that a system based upon 
either dualism is irreparably though not equally im- 
perfect. The one passes into Secularism, the other 
into Mysticism ; while the fulness of Truth springs 
from the co-ordination of both. 

There can be no doubt that the quotation from 
Dr Newman expresses the popular view of the con- 
stituent elements of religion, though this personal 
antithesis is more truly characteristic of Protestantism 
than of Roman Catholicism. It is therefore easy to 
see in which direction the study of the Positive 
religion is likely to be fruitful to us. By dwelling 
on the relations of man to humanity and to the 
world, Comte has again vindicated for religion its 
social destination. Since the Reformation, the general 
tendency of religious influences has been to indivi- 
dualism ; and thus a bold and exclusive enunciation 
of the complementary aspect cannot but contribute to 
the restoration of the true harmony between personal 
and social religion which Christianity, as we believe, 
alone contains. 

III. 

Having thus indicated the one vast lacuna in 
Comte's theory of religion, and the manner in which 
his system is likely to supplement other popular 
theories, we may proceed to trace the outlines of it 
as he has drawn them. 8 Religion is,' he says, ' the 
1 complete harmony proper to human existence, indi- 



Relation to Christianity. 



255 



' vidual and collective, when all its parts are brought appendix 
'into due relation to one another 1 .' It is for the L 
soul, in other words, what health is for the body 2 ; 
and as health is essentially one, though in all cases 
variously and imperfectly realised, so too religion is 
essentially one, though it is attained in various forms 
and in different degrees. Even to the last, it is an 
ideal to which each specific type is an approximation 3 . 

The object of religion, corresponding to this 
definition, is set forth as twofold. It is destined at 
once to discipline (regler) the individual, and to unite 
(rallier) the separate individuals in a harmonious 
whole. It aims at personal unity and social unity 4 . 
And the same influences which tend to correct the 
selfish instincts of each man, tend at the same time 
to bring all men into a true and lasting concord 5 . 

And as the aim of religion is twofold, so also is 
its base. It reposes on an objective and on a sub- 
jective foundation 6 . Without, there is the external 
order, in itself independent of us, which necessarily 
limits our thoughts and actions and feelings. Within, 
there is a principle of benevolent sympathy, which 

1 Politique Positive, n. 8. Compare Catechisme, p. 2. 
' [Eeligion] indique l'etat de complete unite qui distingue notre 
' existence, a la fois personnelle et sociale, quand toutes ses 
1 parties, tant morales que physiques, convergent habituelle- 
' ment vers une destination commune.' 

Thus Comte adopts the derivation from religarc, and not 
from relegere, which Augustine also defends : De Vera Religione, 
55 ; Retract. 13 (the whole of this revision is full of interest). 

2 Pol. Pos. Z. c. 3 Pol. Pos. Z. c. Cat. 3. 

4 Pol. Pos. ii. 66. Cat. I. c. 

5 Pol. Pos. ii. 10. 6 Pol. Pos. ii. 12, 17, 25. Cat. 28. 



256 



Aspects of Positivism in 



appendix prompts us to look beyond our own wants and wishes, 
L and to seek in a wider harmony the satisfaction of 
the deepest instincts of our nature. 

The same dualism is extended also to the com- 
position of religion. It has an intellectual part and 
a moral part. The former includes the adequate con- 
ception of the general laws of physics, of life, of so- 
ciety, to which our feelings and our actions are subor- 
dinated. The latter, under the shape of discipline, 
regulates our conduct at once public and private, and, 
under the shape of worship, guides and intensifies our 
feelings. Briefly, the sphere of doctrine is thought, 
and its end is the True ; the sphere of discipline is 
action, and its end is the Good ; the sphere of worship 
is feeling, and its end is the Beautiful. And, as a 
whole, religion teaches us to know, to serve, and to 
love the great Being, in whom all that falls within 
the range of our power is summed up \ 

IV. 

In this view of the character and scope of religion, 
which no one can deny to be grand and comprehen- 
sive, even while it lacks the Christian elements of 
infinity and personality which we necessarily crave, 
one point is of commanding importance. Religion, 
Comte tells us, is the bringing into harmony the 
order without us and the spirit within us ; the last 
and perfect combination of faith and love 2 . This 
conception is the true key to his whole system. Our 
chief work, therefore, is to learn the character of the 



1 Pol. Pos. ii. 19 ff. 



2 Pol. Pos. ii. 16. 



Relation to Christianity. 



257 



bases on which these final principles respectively appendix 
repose. L 

On the one side then we have a vast external 
order, of which a fuller knowledge is gradually un- 
folded in the long course of ages, whereby we appre- 
hend it as within certain limits at once fixed and 
variable. Step by step we are forced to contemplate 
the phenomena which it presents as falling into 
groups, and connected with one another by certain 
relations of sequence. The laws of observation which 
we thus form are extended gradually from physics 
to life, and from life to history, till we feel that not 
only are the ages permeated by ' an increasing pur- 
' pose,' but that all being also is united by one prin- 
ciple. The efforts of Reason — and the juxtaposition 
is important — naturally culminate in the nobler efforts 
of Faith 1 . 

This order is apprehended, as has been said, as 
being both fixed and variable ; and in both respects it 
affects us beneficently. The fixity furnishes a solid 
basis for our thoughts and actions, and, by making 
foresight generally possible, saves us from idle specu- 
lation and from misdirected energy. At the same 
time it sets an impassable limit to personal caprice, 
and, by basing all life upon submission, prepares 
men for sympathetic effort as united in obedience to a 

1 Pol. Pos. ii. 25 ff. p. 17. ' L'etat religieux repose done 
' sur la combinaison permanente de deux conditions egalement 
' fundamentals, aimer et croire, qui, quoique profondement 
' distinctes, doivent naturellement concourir. Chacune d'elles, 

* outre sa necessite propre, ajoute a l'autre un complement 

* indispensable a sa pleine efficacite.' 

W. R. 17 



258 



Aspects of Positivism in 



appendix common supremacy 1 . Its variability, on the other 
L hand, is the pledge of progress. It stimulates specu- 
lation by suggesting a series of problems of surpassing 
interest. It guides activity by opening fields for 
labour, and substituting fruitful obedience for passive 
resignation. It represses at once asceticism and 
mysticism by offering its greatest blessings not to 
personal, but to social labour 2 . 

Such according to Cointe is the objective base of 
religion. On the other side, it is observed that there 
is an internal tendency in man, springing from be- 
nevolent affections, which carries him beyond himself 
in the search after his proper happiness and dignity 3 . 
Just as the laws of the external world are only 
slowly and partially made known, so this inner life is 
brought out by the gradual evolution of society. The 
love of the Family passes into the love of the State ; 
and the love of the State rises into the all-embracing 
love of Humanity. 

This tendency also, like the external order, is at 
once fixed and variable. In some shape or other, it 
will make itself felt in every man. It may be dwarfed 
and neutralised by atrophy, or strengthened and 
ennobled by exercise. But in its normal development 
Love spontaneously apprehends by moral intuition 
what Faith systematically constructs by intellectual 
processes ; and at the last both coincide in their com- 
plete fulfilment. Faith sees the harmony of all things, 
which Love feels. 



1 Pol. Pos. n. 28 ff. 2 Pol. Pos. ii. 37 ff. Cat. 16, 41. 
3 Pol. Pos. ii. 14. 



Relation to Christianity. 259 

Nor may we forget that while the ultimate ob- appendix 
jective and subjective bases of religion are thus 
broadly distinguished, there is yet always a human 
element in our conception of the Cosmos, and a 
cosmical element in our feelings as men. The unity 
of the world is subjective 1 . The laws of phenomena 
are gained by the abstraction of the constant part 
from the variable. And conversely, the development 
of love is objective. It gains strength only as it is 
manifested according to the conditions of our exist- 
ence. Man indeed is himself, according to the wise 
instinct of old philosophers, a microcosm, including 
in his own person the action of all the laws which 
we observe without us, and supplementing them by 
that higher law of love whereby he alone is capable of 
religion 2 . 

According to this exposition, it is evident that 
religion is built upon knowledge, and the Positivist 
system of doctrine is simply the outline of the 
hierarchy of the sciences, which are severally subordi- 
nated one to another, and each regulated by its 
peculiar laws. In due succession the believer or the 
student — for the words become synonymous — learns 
to appreciate the universal laws of number, time, and 
space, by which all our definite conceptions are ruled ; 
next he passes to those of physics, which are more 
complicated and less general ; then to those of che- 
mistry, which brings him to the verge of life. The 
investigation of the laws of life leads to that of the 

1 Pol. Pos. ii. 32 f. Cat. 36, 77. 
2 Cat. 95, 122. 

17—2 



260 Aspects of Positivism in 

laws of society ; and the last and crowning science 
in this scheme is that of morals 1 . 

Such an encyclopaedic review of the great depart- 
ments of knowledge reveals two important principles. 
Each science is based upon those which precede it in 
the scale, so that in every case the nobler phenomena 
are subordinated to the lower. And, secondly, each 
science, as it increases in complexity, admits also of 
greater variations 2 . To these principles two corollaries 
may be added. First, that each series of laws pro- 
duces its full effect in every instance, though the 
result may be modified by the action of new forces 
acting according to new laws. And, again, that the 
power of foresight, which measures the definiteness of 
the law ? varies from absolute certainty in the case of 
combinations of number, and the like, to indefinite 
doubt when we speculate on the isolated action of 
individuals. 

V. 

One important conclusion follows from this mode 
of viewing the relations of religion and science, which 
has been commonly lost sight of by physicists no less 
than by theologians. If it be true, and it seems to 
be incontestable as far as it goes, a conflict between 
religion and science is impossible. Not only are the 
two subjects heterogeneous, but the results of science — 

1 The connexion of the sciences is clearly given, Pol. Pos, 
ii. 58 ff. The most complete examination of their distribution 
and relations is in Pol. Pos. iv. 187 ff. 

2 Cat. 50, 70, 73. Thus many phenomena will never be 
brought under definite laws. — Cat. 52. 



Relation to Christianity. 261 

whether physical or human — are part of the data appendix 
which it is the function of religion to co-ordinate. L 

Moreover, if we complete the great hierarchy of 
the sciences by the addition of theology above morals, 
it is obvious that the same principles will hold good. 
The new science, so far as it deals with facts, will 
never be independent of the action of the forces 
revealed by the lower sciences \ but it is not itself 
shaped by them. In dealing with it, we shall have 
to take account of new forces manifested under new 
laws, which may modify in a manner wholly in- 
conceivable before experience the laws and forces of 
the lower sciences • but theology is no more there- 
fore inconsistent with them than the science of 
chemistry, for instance, is with the science of life. 
It is impossible to anticipate from the observation 
of an inferior science what will be the phenomena 
of another above it ; and, conversely, the phenomena 
of every superior science will be subject to the laws 
of those below it, though they are not explicable by 
those alone. A problem in biology cannot be solved 
by the application of chemical laws, though these 
must be considered in dealing with it ; and so also 
a question in morals cannot be dealt with solely by 
laws of life, or a question of theology by laws of 
ethics ; though, in both cases, the subordinate laws 
underlie the final result. 

Thus the Positive view of the dependence of 
religion on science errs by defect, and not in prin- 
ciple. It requires to be supplemented, and not over- 
thrown. And when the whole cycle of human thought 
and experience, of consciousness as well as of obser- 



262 Aspects of Positivism in 



appendix vation, is brought within the range of scientific study, 
L we are first capable of perceiving the full grandeur of 
the idea of religion. Its destiny is not only to dis- 
cipline (regler) and to unite (rallier), but still more to 
reunite (relier). It is the final harmony of man, the 
microcosm, not with the world alone, but with God. 

It is of no moment in this respect what view we 
may take of nature {nature^ werden). Every fact in 
science furnishes new material for religion, and at once 
enlarges its scope and tends to define its character. 
But, that it may do so, no fact must be looked at by 
itself. At present, science suffers at least as much 
as religion from partial and contracted views. The 
student of physics perpetrates as many solecisms as 
the student of theology. Every one would feel the 
absurdity of a geometrician denying a fact in morals 
because it is not deducible from his premisses ; and 
yet it is not a rare thing to hear some explorer of 
inorganic nature gravely argue that nothing can be 
known of God, because his inquiries give no direct 
results as to His being or His attributes. Thus each 
partial observer of ethics, or history, or nature, is 
tempted to forget that there are other phenomena 
than those with which he deals, and so to use his 
fragmentary laws as measures of the universe. The 
degradation of science is the inevitable consequence. 
But when all observed facts are placed in their proper 
categories, whether they be facts in physics, or biology, 
or social science, or ethics, or theology, they will, as 
we believe, teach us something more of the will of 
God, which is made manifest to us, according to the 
nature of the subject-matter, in the several orders of 



Relation to Christianity. 263 

being with which each of these departments of know- appendix 
ledge is respectively conversant. L 

We claim then, by our Christian faith, that the 
sphere of religion be recognised as co-extensive with 
the utmost bounds of human thought and knowledge, 
while at the same time it is dominated by a moral 
purpose which springs from sympathy or love. The 
personal object of religion — the reconciliation of man 
to God — is not likely ever to be absent from our 
minds ; but there is at all times a tendency to omit, 
at least in popular exposition, this complementary 
view of the harmonization of man with humanity and 
nature. Scepticism at once occupies the ground which 
is abandoned. And in this lies one of the great les- 
sons of Positivism, that by asserting religion to be the 
complete harmony of man and the Cosmos, it has 
forced again upon our notice aspects of Christian 
truth which have been more or less hidden since the 
teaching of the greatest Greek fathers was superseded 
in the West by the necessarily narrower system of 
Latin theology. Some conception of the great order 
at p resent we must have 1 ; and if our religion is, as 
we believe, the highest expression which can be given 
to faith and love, it will embrace this also. We shall 
rise beyond the individual standing-point to some one 
higher and more commanding; and while we retain 
firmly our original sense of the inestimable worth of 
the individual soul, we shall feel also that each is 
part of a sublimer whole, extending through all time 
and space, and bound by sensible and indissoluble 
links to the sum of all being.. 

1 Cat. 26. 



264 Aspects of Positivism in 



appendix YI. 
t 

It is not difficult to characterise the ideas which 
are brought into prominence by this extension of the 
religious field of life. The Positivist suggests the 
ideas of continuity, solidarity, and totality ; the Chris- 
tian, going yet further, adds the idea of infinity ; and 
without the distinct recognition of these four ideas, it 
seems to be impossible to represent adequately the 
message of Christianity, as a historical and sacra- 
mental religion, to our own age. 

A very little reflection will shew the profound in- 
fluence which continuity exercises upon life. When 
it is once apprehended, no religion which claims to be 
universal can neglect it. Materially, intellectually, 
and morally, we are the children of the past, destined 
in turn to give birth to a new race which will inherit 
all that we possess. Whatever view we may take of 
the originative power of the individual, and w r e claim 
necessarily that the personal will shall be admitted to 
be an independent force, it is evident that the accu- 
mulations of wealth of every form which furnish the 
instruments of our action, the treasures of language 
which control the general tenour of our thoughts, the 
forms and habits of social and national intercourse 
which stimulate and guide our feelings, are incom- 
parably stronger than any individual power w T hich can 
be brought to bear upon them. If it were not so, in 
place of society we should have chaos. And all these 
are in their source and growth independent of us. 
We can watch how, in old times, the various results 
of labour and reflection and conflict were gathered up 



Relation to Christianity. 265 

and perpetuated in abiding shapes \ but we have no appendix 
choice but to receive them. It is our privilege to 1 
modify, but not to begin. More and more as the 
ages go on, in Comte's striking phrase, we who live 
are ruled by the dead, though it is our prerogative to 
serve them with a free and willing service, and in our 
turn, when our work is done, to be joined with them 
in the sovereignty of the future 1 . 

Two important conclusions flow from this law of 
our earthly existence. The first is, to borrow again 
Comte's own phrase, that progress is the development 
of order 2 ; and the second, that the thoughts or insti- 
tutions of the past can be applied to the present only 
by a method of proportion. 

As to the first, it is of no moment whether, like 
the Positivist, we regard the phenomena of society 
simply in themselves, without referring them to any 
higher cause, or whether we see in them (as we do) 
the manifestation of the will of God. No one looking 
back over the past can fail to detect a general advance 
of humanity, as a whole, in certain definite directions 
corresponding to what we observe in the fuller de- 
velopment of the man. The progress, on a large scale, 
exhibits the harmonious elevation of our whole complex 
being, even though periods of devastation and fiery trial 
are needed for the preparation of the future growth. 

The second consequence, though it is really more 
obvious, is more commonly overlooked. Any expres- 
sion of popular judgment, whether it be made by 

1 Pol. Pos. ii. 61. Cat. 32. The question of hereditary 
character deserves more attention from moralists than it has 
received. Cf. Cat. 102. 2 Cat. 108. 



266 Aspects of Positivism in 

appendix word or by act, is necessarily relative to the time and 
L circumstances under which it is made. As circum- 
stances change, it does not by any means follow that 
the changes in the acceptation of words or in the sig- 
nificance of acts will be made in the same direction, 
so that the relation between them will remain fixed. 
And therefore, if we would gain for ourselves the 
blessings which we can refer in past ages to certain 
institutions or formulas, it can only be by realising 
the relation in which they stood to the whole consti- 
tution of society then, and finding their proportional 
representatives now. To transfer a form of one age 
unaltered into another is in most cases to be faithless 
to that very principle of continuity by which we claim 
to be children of the first century, or the fourth, or the 
ninth, or the thirteenth. We are the children of the 
men who lived then ; we cannot be the men themselves. 

The doctrine of solidarity is not less fruitful of 
thought than that of continuity. It presents to us (if 
such an illustration is allowable) in a horizontal sec- 
tion a similar succession of varieties of society to that 
which we have considered before in a vertical section. 
Or, to take another mode of expression, it presents in 
the extension of space what continuity regards in the 
extension of time. In a family, or a city, or a nation, 
we can readily apprehend how the co-existing mem- 
bers are bound together so as to form a whole, of 
which each part is really, though remotely, united to 
the others by material and moral actions and reactions. 
Our observation of the subtle influences by which con- 
tinuity is preserved helps us to extend this idea yet 
further. Nation is thus seen to be moved by nation, 



Relation to Christianity. 267 



stock by stock, till the whole race, which is connected appendix 
spiritually by a community of nature, is felt also to be L 
connected actually by mutual, though often indirect, 
operations of each fragment upon the rest. 

Whenever we seize, however tremblingly, as at 
best it must be, this vast conception of the Great 
Being in which all mankind is for the time united, 
it is evident that our views of the destiny, of the 
relations, and of the action of men will be greatly 
influenced. The thought which inspires hope, and 
assures patience, at the same time ennobles labour, 
and stimulates action. Hope and patience spring 
necessarily out of the application of the lessons of the 
past to the present. We can see how rivalries and 
conflicts, the rise and fall of principles and states, 
the very exhaustion of powers once beneficent and 
life-giving, have contributed to the whole progress of 
human life. We can believe then that phenomena of 
the same kind, when co-existent, are no less instru- 
mental of good. And it is no objection to this faith 
that it is not in our experience converted into sight. 
Life would be indefinitely impoverished if the fruits of 
effort or suffering were not reserved in the richest 
measure for the future. 

The present effect of the idea of solidarity upon 
labour and action is perhaps less frequently realised 
than the remoter effect which has been just noticed, 
but it is at least capable of being far more energetic. 
Briefly, it may be summed up in two principles. It 
consecrates the permanent variety of functions in life 1 , 
and substitutes duties for rights 2 . 

1 Cat. 109, 113. 

2 Cat. 289. The conception of salary as simply designed 



268 Aspects of Positivism in 



appendix As long as we regard individuals as so many 
L separate units, it is clear that we must regard com- 
plete equality as the ultimate ideal of their state. 
The object of reform must be to assimilate man to 
man. But this chimerical fancy loses all rational 
basis when the individual is seen to be the member 
of a body which itself is part of a greater whole, of 
which the final dimensions surpass all human imagi- 
nation. Then it follows at once that complexity of 
office is the condition of health. The completeness of 
health depends on the completeness of the organism. 
Society, in every true sense, would cease to exist 
without an abiding distinction of classes. Humanity 
wou]d be poorer if it were deprived of any national 
or specific types. There is no confusion in the multi- 
plicity of service. There is no levelling, no disparage- 
ment, in the just subordination of distinct works. 
The essential variety, the actual combination, both 
belong to the characteristics of life. 

And if we apply the principle to the separate 
work of each, it becomes, as it were, a revelation of 
the moral dignity of labour. No one in any society 
works for himself. Each worker is a servant of the 
body. He does really co-operate with all for the 
good of all. It is only required that he should feel 
the destination and the source of what he does and 

'a remplacer chez chaque organe social les materiaux qu'il 
' consomme toujours, com me provisions pour [sa subsistance 
' ou instruments pour sa function' (Cat. 116), is worthy of 
attention, as well as the principle on which it is based, that 
' chaque service personnel ne comporte jamais d'autre recom- 
1 pense que la satisfaction de l'accomplir et la reconnaissance 
4 qu'il procure ' (Cat. 117). 



Relation to Christianity. 269 



of what he receives. Then at last he would, as appendix 
Comte admirably expresses the truth, know that < to L 
1 live for others ' is but another aspect of ' living by 
' others 1 .' 

At the same time the transference of our point of 
sight from the individual to the body brings out into 
clear light the second principle. If the individual be 
the centre, then he may have rights ; but if the body 
be the centre, he can have only duties. It is possible 
that these complementary aspects may be reconciled, 
but there can be no doubt which we most frequently 
forget. And if we once add the Christian idea of 
what the body potentially is, all notion of personal 
claims vanishes in comparison with the infinite debt 
whereby we are bound, each in our measure, to fill 
up that which is lacking to the completeness of the 
whole. 

The doctrine of what I have ventured to call the 
totality of life carries yet one step further the doc- 
trines of its continuity and solidarity. It is not only 
that the successive generations of men are linked 
together by laws which they can only modify, and 
not abrogate, nor yet that each generation is inter- 
penetrated and united by a common life ; but the life 
of humanity is itself ruled, in a great measure, by the 
medium in which it is passed. The influence of phy- 
sical powers upon man may have been exaggerated, 
but we cannot deny that it is real. Comte himself 

i * Vivre pour autrui devient chez chacun de nous le devoir 
' continu qui resulte rigoureusement de ce fait irrecusable — 
' vivre par autrui ' (Cat. 266). To a Christian the words have 
a tenfold force. 



270 Aspects of Positivism in 



does not overstate it. ' The world,' he writes, ' fur- 
' nishes the materials, and man determines the form.' 
1 Man is not a result of the world, and yet he depends 
1 upon it 1 .' The observed variations in the constancy 
of the relations of nature and man are not sufficient 
to disturb our confidence in the fixity of what we 
call natural laws. And, conversely, while the laws 
remain fixed, man is so far capable of modifying the 
elements through which their action is displayed, as 
to seriously alter their total effect. If again we regard 
only living forms, here the power of man is supreme. 
Some die away at his approach ; others follow him ; 
others are capable of receiving what we are forced to 
call the moral impress of his character. 

To pursue in any detail the consequences which 
flow from this connexion of man with the physical 
world would be impossible here. It must be enough 
to notice the general lessons which it teaches as to 
the action of man and the destiny of creation. As 
to the first, it shews that the sovereignty of man is 
manifested, not in the direct exertion, but in the 
guidance of force 2 . The effect in each case depends 
not so much on power as on wisdom. In other 
words, our true strength lies in taking each discovered 
law as the rule according to which we may employ 
our energies, always remembering that the higher 
phenomena rest upon and include the lower, and are 
modifiable in direct proportion to their complexity. 

On the other hand, as man is at present con- 
tinually modifying all nature, both spontaneously and 
of purpose, it is necessary to regard the connexion 
1 Gat. 42, 37. 2 Cat. 105 ff. 



Relation to Christianity, 271 



thus established as in some sense permanent. We appendix 
cannot wholly sever the fate of the lower and humbler L 
companions of man, for example, from the fate of 
man himself. And perhaps there is nothing more 
characteristic of Comte than the almost importunate 
eagerness with which he claims for the animals, which 
habitually labour with man to secure his worthy 
objects, incorporation, according to their individual 
dignity and services, in the great being into which 
man himself passes 1 . 

VII. 

Now these grand and far-reaching ideas of the 
continuity, the solidarity, the totality of life, which 
answer equally to the laws of our being and the 
deepest aspirations of our souls, are not only recon- 
cilable with Christianity, but they are essentially 
Christian. The Positivist theory, so far from ad- 
vancing anything novel in such teaching, simply 
places us once again in the original Christian point of 
view of the Cosmos. Once again the divinity of the 
Gospel is vindicated by its power, when honestly 
interpreted, to stand abreast or in advance of the 
noblest generalisations of experience. And this is in 
virtue of its essential constitution, intellectually no 
less than spiritually. For, because it is contained 
primarily in facts, and not in words, it rises beyond 
the possible associations of a single age to a full 
harmony with universal life. And so, as our view of 
life becomes fuller and richer, our view of the Gospel, 



1 Cat. 31. 



272 



Aspects of Positivism in 



which is the transfiguration of life, becomes fuller and 
richer in the same degree. Doctrine which is based 
upon the Incarnation or the Resurrection must be 
progressive, organic, and total. These facts, however 
imperfectly interpreted, yet mark human existence 
by an advance in a definite direction, by relation to 
one centre, by approximation towards a perfect ideal. 
They contain a principle of continuous life, a principle 
of social unity, a prospect of 'the restoration of all 
' things.' And this, too, was the case before history 
or science had laid open the general laws of human 
progress or the necessary connexion of man with the 
world. 

Nor, while the facts in themselves are found to 
be thus pregnant, does the apostolic interpretation of 
the facts in any degree fall short of the meaning 
which has been assigned to them. 6 It was the pur- 
' pose of God/ we read, ' that, in the dispensation of 
' the fulness of times, He might sum up all things in 
1 Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon 
'the earth 1 .' 

Because of Christ's Incarnation and Passion, ' God 
4 also highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name 
'which is above every name, that in the name of 
' Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, 
'and things on earth, and things under the earth 2 .' 

From Christ, — 'which is the head,' — 'all the body 
' fitly framed and knit together through that which 
' every joint supplieth, according to the working in due 
' measure of each several part, maketh the increase of 
'the body unto the building up of itself in love 3 .' 

1 Eph. i. 10. 2 Phil. ii. 9, 10. 3 Eph. iv. 16. 



Relation to Christianity. 273 



' The earnest expectation of the creation waiteth appendix 
6 for the revealing of the sons of God... groaning and L 
'travailing in pain together until now 1 .' 

Such language, in its. assured confidence, passes 
our hope ; and as we ponder on it, we may well 
doubt whether even to St Paul himself the infinite 
depths of wisdom which it contains were open as 
they are to us now. Here also it seems as if the 
lapse of ages and the slow widening of thought could 
alone adequately reveal the significance of prophecy 2 . 

But Christianity does not pause where Positivism 
pauses, in the visible order. It carries the unity of 
being yet further, and links all that is seen with that 
unseen which can only be figured to us in parables. 
An imperious instinct asserts that our individual 
existence is not closed by what falls here under our 
senses ; and every indication of the intimate relation- 
ship of man with man, and of age with age, confirms 
the belief in the further extension of this law of 
dependence to an order of being beyond the present. 
If we further take account of the many tokens of a 
scheme begun and not completed here, which requires 
for the present the sacrifice of races, it may be, or 
of generations, the same conviction is deepened. 
Even in the constitution and advance of society, the 
effects of selfishness and sin are so open and great, 
that we are forced to look onward to some future 
resolution of the discords by which they interrupt the 
harmony of life. 

From the nature of the case, it is impossible that 
we should have any distinct apprehension of this 
1 Eom. viii. 19, 22. 2 Comp. 1 Pet. i. 10—12. 

W. B. 18 



274 Aspects of Positivism in 

appendix unseen order. Our utmost resources of language only 
enable us to combine variously the phenomena with 
which we are already acquainted ; and this to which 
we are looking is a new order, and not the transfer- 
ence of the old to a new sphere. But though our 
notions of the future must be vague, Christianity so 
treats it as to assure us of our personal hope, and at 
the same time to indicate the direction in which we 
may look for the solution of the mysteries of society. 

In the first place, it accepts unequivocally the 
indivisibility of man 1 . The body is not a burden by 
which the soul is temporarily weighed down, but an 
essential condition of our personality, to be won 2 and 
disciplined, and in the end to be transfigured, but not 
destroyed. The central fact in which these truths 
are conveyed is absolutely unique, as is the combina- 
tion of the truths themselves. Between the Resur- 
rection and any of the other raisings from the dead 
there is no more resemblance than there is between 
the Incarnation and any of the fabled visits of the 
Greek gods to earth in human shapes. The same 
event which declares the essential permanence of our 
whole being shews that the conditions of its action and 
existence will be changed. In what way this change 
will be accomplished we cannot tell. We know only 
that we can draw no conclusions from the limitations 
of this world as to the character of the next, and, on 
the other hand, that nothing in us will be lost. 

Corresponding reflections help us to see how that 
which appears to be lost or prematurely carried away 
here may have truly fulfilled its work. It is clear 
1 Comp. Cat. 24. 2 Comp. 1 Thess. iv. 4 (ktwAcu). 



Relation to Christianity. 275 

that performance is not a final test of character, nor appendix 
external action of effect. We are conscious of subtle L 
powers about us, which cannot be analysed or re- 
sisted. In another order, as we can believe, we may 
be allowed to see how these had their origin in silent, 
unnoticed, or forgotten souls, which will then be 
revealed in the plenitude of their true energy. 

The mystery of evil, we allow, still remains ; but 
even on this light is cast. It ceases, at least, to be 
triumphant or active. 

6 Then cometh the end when [Christ] shall deliver 
c up the kingdom to God, even the Father • when He 
' shall have abolished all rule, and all authority and 
'power. For He must reign till He hath put all 
' His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that 
' shall be abolished is death... Then shall the Son also 
4 Himself be subjected to Him that did subject all 
' things unto Him, that God may be all in all 1 .' 

This sublime prospect lies before us, in which all 
the varied developments of life are crowned with 
their divine fulfilment. And though the contem- 
plation of it may lie without the range of the personal 
teaching of Christianity which commonly limits our 
religious thought, yet it is a duty to strive, as occasion 
may arise, to grasp the full proportions of the hope 
which it brings to man and to the world. It is not 
always enough that each should feel in his own heart 
the power of the Gospel to meet individual wants. 
We must claim for it also to be recognised as a 
wisdom revealed and realised only in the advance of 
time, and embracing in one infinite fact all that men 
1 1 Cor. xv. 24 ff. 

18—2 



276 Aspects of Positivism, &c. 

appendix have aspired to for themselves and for the transitory 
L order in which they are placed. 

It is our lot to live in an age when this need is 
imperative. On all sides there is a restless striving 
after some solid construction of truth which may rise 
out of and above the results of negative criticism. 
Never before were the evils of dispersive study more 
apparent or more pressing. Never before were iso- 
lated views of truth more capable of being exhibited 
in their one-sidedness. Never before was anarchy of 
thought and life felt to be more at variance with the 
highest destiny of man. Never before was there a 
more passionate longing for spiritual unity among 
those whom the conditions of life have separated. Of 
all these facts the teaching of Positivism is an un- 
looked-for and unsuspected witness. At the same 
time it seems to point out how we may apply the 
apostolic message to combine, and supplement, and 
guide, and animate the scattered elements out of 
which the future may be worthily built. And while 
we thankfully receive the lessons which it gives, we 
owe to it also a new confirmation of our historic creed. 
For if anything external can re-assure faith, it must 
be that the widest interpretation of human progress, 
the subtlest analysis of human nature, is only a partial 
commentary on the Resurrection. 



APPENDIX II. 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST A NEW 
REVELATION 1 . 

I. 

IT is greatly to be regretted that those who enter appendix 
on the examination of religious questions do not in IL 
every case state distinctly the postulates which under- 
lie their reasoning. As it is, serious misunderstanding- 
arises from the use of words which carry with them 
wholly different associations, according as they are 
used on one side or the other ; and discussions which 
profess to be impartial are conducted, it may be even 
unconsciously, in the interest of foregone conclusions. 
It is obvious, for example, that the idea of a ' sign ' 
or { miracle ' is, under particular circumstances, 
natural or unnatural according as a man believes, or 
does not believe, in a Creator who is still in a living 
connexion with His creation. If, again, it is assumed 
that a revelation is impossible, the belief in a revela- 
tion must be a delusion, and the records which give an 
account of its delivery must be incredible. This being 

1 This Essay originally appeared in the Contemporary Re- 
view, Nov. 1877. 



278 The Resurrection of Christ 

appendix so, it is clear that the charge which is habitually 
urged against so-called ' apologists,' of being com- 
mitted to the conclusion which they have to establish, 
applies more completely to the 'alogists,' who deny 
the possibility of revelation altogether. The ' apolo- 
gist' is perfectly free to modify his view of the 
methods of revelation, to strive to gain a fuller con- 
ception of the unity of the Divine plan, to seek for a 
more comprehensive survey of £ nature,' as embracing 
the utmost potency of being which falls within the 
grasp of his powers ; but the ' alogist ' has barred his 
own progress by an absolute negation. 6 This and 
' this,' he ventures to say, 'cannot be: if it is ever 
' said to have been, the statement is inherently false. 
' All that remains for the critic is to explain as plausibly 
i as he can how the statement gained currency.' 

I propose, therefore, in the present paper to state 
as clearly as I can under what conditions the Chris- 
tian enters on an examination of the evidence for the 
Resurrection, what is the Evangelic conception of the 
fact itself, how the fact thus interpreted illustrates the 
character of the Christian faith generally as a historical 
faith, how it bears upon our views of the world and 
upon studies of present interest. It is obviously im- 
possible to do more than indicate lines of thought in 
these different directions. The examination of the 
details of evidence belongs to another place. But a 
general view of the Christian position, apart from 
other advantages, will shew that some of the attacks 
directed against it are based on misconceptions. 

Three final assumptions are made everywhere 
throughout the Bible. It is assumed (1) that Cod is, 



a New Revelation. 



279 



and that He is righteous and loving ; (2) that man appendix 
was made in the image of God ; and (3) that man has IL 
fallen, It is taken for granted that these statements 
correspond with man's constitution, and that he is 
directly conscious of their truth. They lie beyond 
the region of debate. It is indeed possible to shew 
not only that they fall in with what we can observe, 
but that the sum of experience illustrates and con- 
firms them ; still, if they be denied, argument is 
useless. No ' proof ' can establish the existence of a 
Heavenly Father, the God of conscience, and not 'the 
4 Absolute Being ' of ontology. No ' proof ' can shew 
beyond contradiction that we can hold intercourse 
with Him, the finite with the Infinite. No ' proof ' 
can demonstrate that that which is to lift us up must 
be outside us and above us. But we claim that these 
ultimate facts are given in germ, in consciousness. 
"We claim that those who have attained to the maturity 
of self-knowledge under normal conditions recognise 
them as true. They form for us the presuppositions 
of all religious controversy 1 . 

Assumptions of the same kind underlie all reason- 
ing ; they are not peculiar to theology. The belief in 
the external world, and the belief in our own personal 
responsibility, rest on grounds exactly similar to those 
which support the belief in a Heavenly Father. Each 
of these three ultimate beliefs is open to specious 

1 This is not the place to explain more at length or to de- 
fend these presuppositions. I wish simply to mark clearly the 
position which Christian critics occupy. It is evident that all 
examination of evidence involves some presuppositions. 



280 The Resurrection of Christ 

objections ; each belief is maintained by the require- 
ments and the experience of living. 

Several important conclusions follow immediately 
from these assumptions. If God is the Father of men, 
it becomes probable that He will under certain cir- 
cumstances make His presence felt by peculiar 'signs,' 
and that these 6 signs ' will bear a definite relation 
both to the Divine lessons with which they are con- 
nected and to the persons to whom the lessons are 
addressed. It becomes probable, further, that, when 
the discipline of humanity is regarded on a large 
scale, these special manifestations of the Divine will 
appear to be analogous to crises in the development of 
the individual life, in which exceptional powers are 
active for a time and then subside, all being harmonious 
parts of one life. And again, to look at the subject 
from another point of sight, if we derive our being, it 
matters not through what descent, from a good Creator, 
each natural desire or instinct of man carries with it 
the promise of fulfilment. It is not conceivable that 
he should have been endowed with aspirations which 
must always remain unsatisfied. He may be unable 
beforehand to anticipate how they will be satisfied ; 
he may even form false and confident anticipations ; 
but after the event it must be discernible that the 
satisfaction is real. If we feel that the scheme of 
things in which we are placed is true, if we feel, that 
is, that the apparent signs of progress which it exhibits 
reveal its essential nature, we cannot doubt that the 
characteristic tendencies of human action and feeling 
and thought are also true, and turned towards that 
which we are made to attain to. It cannot, then, be 



a New Revelation. 



281 



in vain that we instinctively look forward to a nobler appendix 
future, and a closer fellowship with God hereafter; IL 
and turn heavenward, as knowledge widens, for some 
fuller teaching as to these loftiest hopes. No doubt 
our instincts, both physical and moral, require to be 
disciplined and trained ; but they are in a real sense 
prophetic. While they are not, in our present condi- 
tion, authoritative, they are suggestive. 

Thus revelation, which is only one form of the 
continuous intercourse of God and man, so far from 
being improbable, is seen from the actual circumstances 
of life to be a natural consequence of the Divine 
Fatherhood. It is in regard to the life of the society 
as natural as prayer in the life of the individual. 
Prayer in fact presupposes revelation, for it is man's 
answer to the voice of God. And the thoughts of 
revelation and prayer illustrate one another in other 
ways. The mode of revelation, for instance, may be 
expected to vary from age to age, just as the scope of 
prayer. As man advances in the knowledge of God, 
he will at each point in his progress fashion his 
thoughts of Him in harmony with the sum of all he 
knows. 

Nor can it be fairly said that such a view of the 
living relation between God and man and the world as 
is assumed by the Christian introduces any confusion 
into his view of the order in which he is placed. It 
simply substitutes the conception of a rational order 
for the conception of a mechanical order. All action 
is based upon the supposition that man can himself, 
within certain limits, modify the medium in which he 
moves, and the personal influence of each man is 



The Resurrection of Christ 



appendix absolutely incalculable, yet this indeterminate factor 
IL introduces no practical disharmony into the universe; 
and it is obviously impossible that this special action, 
■which (it is assumed) answers to perfect wisdom, 
should do so. Alogists habitually discuss miracles 
as if they were supposed to be arbitrary manifestations 
of power, and not essentially connected with a moral 
purpose and adapted to the wants of those to whom 
they were granted. If they were arbitrary they would 
have no theological value. The 'signs' of God would 
cease to be ' signs ' unless they illustrated what we 
can recognise as a divine law of progress 1 . 

For nothing external, no 'sign,' has an absolute 
or irresistible force. Every alleged ' sign ' must be 
carefully interpreted and brought to a spiritual test. 
As a ' sign ' of God it must be consistent with all 
that we already know of Him ; and the same power 
which enables us in the first instance to recognise 
God, enables us also to recognise further manifesta- 
tions of His nature and will 2 . 

The order of the universe which the Christian 

1 Such a statement as that of Mr Macan (for example,) 1 If 
'miracles are possible, history is impossible' (p. 116, note), is 
only intelligible on an assumption which a Christian utterly 
denies. I should venture to say that Christianity alone gives a 
stable foundation to history, as shewing the law and end of 
life. Viewed in relation to the whole history of the Church 
or of the world, 1 miracles ' take an intelligible place in the 
development and interpretation of life. 

2 The full significance of these statements will appear, on a 
careful examination of the following typical passages : — Deut. 
xiii. 1 ff. ; Ezek. xiv. 4 ff. ; Matt. xxiv. 23 I ; 2 Thess. ii. 8 ff. ; 
Apoc. xiii. 13 f. 



a New Revelation. 



283 



maintains is therefore as real as that of the alogist, appendix 
and as truly verifiable, while it is vaster. Both IL 
orders correspond with abstractions which are based 
upon observation ; but the Christian order regards the 
seen as standing in a vital connexion with the unseen, 
and under the necessary limitations of our present 
human faculties presents potentially the completest 
synthesis of being which we can conceive. The occur- 
rence of ' signs ' causes no break in the continuity of 
history : on the contrary, they indicate something 
more as to the nature of the whole life which history 
expresses. Nor again, is any function of historical 
criticism dependent on the assumption that facts of a 
particular kind are impossible. The object of criticism 
is to test the records of a belief, and then comes the 
interpretation of the belief. The recorded instances 
of revelation are for the believer so many elements of 
which he takes due account in his view of the whole 
system of phenomena which is offered for his devout 
study. Little by little he is enabled to apprehend the 
course of things according to its true law, till the 
distinction of 'natural' and 'supernatural' is lost in 
the perception of the one will of God wrought out in 
many ways and parts throughout the whole range of 
creation which falls under our notice. 

II. 

These general remarks enable us to approach the 
consideration of the Resurrection from the true point 
of sight. For the believer the Resurrection is the 
crowning revelation of God, the sign of the continuity 



284 The Resurrection of Christ 

appendix of the fulness of human being through the seen into 
IL the unseen. Under this aspect it is not open to 
objection on the ground that it is ' contrary to expe- 
' rience,' for its significance is affirmed to consist in the 
fact that it is absolutely without parallel. It cannot 
be said to be even improbable, if it can be shewn to 
convey that teaching as to the future of creation which 
we are constituted to expect. The alogist utterly 
misunderstands the state of the case when he persist- 
ently represents the Resurrection of Christ as one of 
many raisings from the dead 1 . If it were no more 
than this, it could not form the foundation of a Gospel. 
The fact was, as we maintain, essentially unique ; the 
teaching which it conveyed was essentially new. 

A twofold difficulty stands in the way of a just 
estimate of the novelty of the teaching of the Resur- 
rection. It is difficult to realise the absence of a 
great and familiar idea ; it is difficult also to leave 
room, so to speak, for larger aspects of a fact which 
we seem to have felt already in all its grandeur. 
And thus it comes to pass that the revelation given 
us by Christ's rising is in one direction spoken of as 
' commonplace/ and in another it is unconsciously 
neglected. Part of the truth signified by it has 
passed so completely into modern thought that we 
can hardly imagine that men were ever without the 
sure trust that death is the personal admission to the 
nearer Presence of God. Part of it again is only 
now at last dawning upon us ; and we are in danger 
of refusing to recognise the new light, though in this 



1 E.g. Supernatural Religion, iii. 428 n. 



a New Revelation. 



285 



respect it is not hard to see how the original apostolic appendix 
message meets the latest results of time. IL 

Something at least has been gained by recent dis- 
cussions. It is admitted on all sides that the first 
disciples believed that the Lord had been raised from 
the dead ; it is admitted also that the eleven apostles 
and St Paul believed that they had seen Him after the 
Resurrection. Historical evidence, alone, can go no 
further than this. It cannot do more than establish 
the reality of the belief in a particular fact. The 
belief is itself the interpretation of phenomena which 
cannot be recalled, and, in every case, only one of 
several conceivable interpretations. It is obviously 
impossible to preserve completely the grounds on 
which the belief was embraced. These may, indeed, 
be indicated more or less completely, but it is easy to 
see that details, which find no record, may have been 
rightly decisive at the moment. Thus our judgment 
on the truth of a belief is to be decided mainly by the 
character of the belief and by the circumstances of 
those who first held it. In the case of the Resurrec- 
tion the question at issue is simply, in one form or 
other, Is it more reasonable to suppose that the 
apostles were mistaken or that the Lord did rise % Or, 
to break the question into its parts, What was the 
character of the belief? And, Can the belief, with 
its results, be explained from the actual position of 
those who held it without the acceptance of the cor- 
responding objective fact? 

The general character of the apostolic belief in 
Christ's Resurrection may be best seen by regarding 
the Resurrection in connexion with other raisings 



286 



The Resurrection of Christ 



appendix from the dead. Briefly it may be said that all the 
IL other raisings from the dead recorded in the Bible are 
instances of restoration to the conditions of earthly 
life : the Resurrection of Christ was the revelation of 
a new life 1 . The distinction is equally unquestionable 
and significant. There cannot be the least doubt that 
those whom the Lord is recorded to have called back 
to life were afterwards subject to the ordinary circum- 
stances of our present existence. It is no less certain 
that all the notices of the Risen Lord represent Him 
as changed while still personally the same. The 
daughter of Jairus, the young man at Xain, and 
Lazarus, as far as we can see, resumed their former 
positions ; but the connexion of the Lord with the 
disciples after the Resurrection was wholly altered. 
He was known only when He pleased to reveal Him- 
self. He was surrounded with a mysterious awfulness. 
At the very time when He offered a material test of 
the reality of His presence He shewed that He was 
not bound by the laws of matter. There is evidently 
a 'law' by which the conditions of His appearances 
are determined. And these contrasted traits are pre- 
served in the different narratives with perfect con- 
sistency, so that it is impossible to doubt that the 
disciples believed that the Lord lived again after the 
Passion, and yet under new and glorious conditions of 
life hitherto unrealised. For such a conception they 
had absolutely no precedent. To speak of it as a 
'ruling, idea' of their age, is to misrepresent facts. 
On the contrary it was to them a most difficult and 

1 I do not enter on the discussion of Matt. xxviL 52 f. The 
incident recorded there is wholly isolated. 



a New Revelation. 287 



strange idea. They thought at first that * they saw a, appendix 
' spirit/ and this impression had to be overcome. So IL 
far as they had any acquaintance with a rising again, 
their notions were directly at variance with the cir- 
cumstances of the Lord's Resurrection. The language 
of Herod and of the people who identified the Lord 
with John the Baptist raised from the dead, or with 
one of the prophets, so far as it had any serious 
meaning, indicates no capacity for a belief in a Resur- 
rection such as that by which the Church lived. And 
as a matter of experience the popular conceptions of 
a carnal Resurrection very speedily overpowered the 
teaching of the New Testament in the early Church 1 . 

From this point of sight the importance of the two 
chief £ moments' in the history of the Resurrection 
becomes obvious. The tomb in which the body of the 
Lord was laid was found empty. The Lord appeared 
and disappeared at pleasure. All that belonged to 
His humanity was preserved, and at the same time all 
was transfigured. This twofold conception presented 
with perfect simplicity and perfect distinctness by the 
Evangelists was entirely unparalleled ; and it includes 
teaching which has not yet been popularly appro- 
priated. 

This being so, it will be seen that no misunder- 
standing of the Christian idea of the Resurrection can 
be more complete than that which is involved in the 
following dilemma : — 

1 Any one who will take the trouble to verify in detail the 
facts indicated summarily in this paragraph, will learn a 
valuable lesson on the historical characteristics of the Gos- 
pels. 



288 The Resurrection of Christ 

APPENDIX 4 One or other alternative must be adopted : — If Jesus 
II. possessed his own body after his resurrection and could eat 
and be handled, he could not vanish ; if he vanished, he could 
not have been thus corporeal 1 .' 

The very point of the revelation lies in the reconcilia- 
tion of these two aspects of the Lord's humanity. The 
one assures us in the only way in which, as far as we 
can see, the assurance could be given, that nothing is 
lost in the passage through death ; the other that the 
limitations which belong to earthly existence are not 
to be extended to the future order. 

The full power of this complex conception is 
gathered up in the fact of the Ascension, which is the 
natural or necessary sequel of the Resurrection accord- 
ing to the Christian view. The manifestations of the 
Risen Christ, as recorded in the Gospels, lead up to it. 
The history of the forty days shews a gradual prepara- 
tion of the disciples for the realisation of a spiritual 
presence of Christ with His Church. So long He 
allowed them to feel that He was moving locally 
among them. Then He made it clear by a sensible 
sign that He had entered on a new state. Thus, the 
Resurrection rightly interpreted includes the Ascen- 
sion ; and conversely, the Ascension finally interprets 
the Resurrection for men and under the forms of 
common thought. That visible lifting from the earth 
marked the close of one epoch of revelation and the 
beginning of another. Henceforward the Lord was 
recognised as throned in glory on the right hand of 
God, near alike to all His people. 

But it will be said that the view which has been 



1 S. R. iii. 462. 



a New Revelation. 



289 



given of the Resurrection is an 'inference' from the appendix 
records. The statement is true ; and true necessarily. IL 
It is only by inference, by interpretation, that we can 
obtain an adequate conception of a fact which belongs 
to two orders. The Risen Christ belongs to earth and 
to heaven. If His Resurrection and His raised man- 
hood were of earth only, it might be possible, perhaps, 
to imagine how any single observer might have ascer- 
tained the fact by outward observation, though it is 
clear that he could not have transmitted his assurance 
to others. But as it is, no external tests could have 
established what is of the essence of the fact, the per- 
manence of the old under new conditions not expressed 
by the 'laws' of this world. On the contrary, if 
external tests alone were satisfied, the very ground 
of our hope would be destroyed. That which is the 
strength of the Christian now would be taken away. 

In this respect the Christian view of the Resur- 
rection, as an interpretation of all the phenomena 
recorded, corresponds with the interpretation of every 
other divine sign. No external phenomenon in itself 
can prove the existence of an Almighty God. But if 
we believe that God is, then we can learn, through 
the world without, lessons as to His character and 
will. There will, however, always remain a way of 
evasion for the unbeliever. Even if he admits the 
accuracy of the original observation, and the complete- 
ness of the testimony to the observed facts, it will 
still be possible to refer whatever is exceptional in 
them to some unknown force simply sufficient to pro- 
duce the given effect. In other words, the presuppo- 
sitions of belief underlie the interpretations of belief. 

W. R. 19 



290 The Resurrection of Christ 



appendix It is therefore quite true in one sense that the 
IL Resurrection ' proves' nothing. It has no constrain- 
ing power to compel assent to any proposition ; but it 
is the crowning 4 sign' of the counsel of God for men. 
It comes to satisfy aspirations, to illuminate doubts, 
to confirm and define faith. That which St John 
observes of the effect of 4 the beginning of signs ' is 

S. John fulfilled in this latest sign : Jesus manifested His 
glory, and His disciples believed on Him. 

This consideration places the narratives of the 
Gospels in their proper light. They are addressed to 
those who believe the fact, and are not directly 
designed to create the belief. They are in this respect, 
as in all others, a record of a revelation. When this 
is once recognised, it will be seen how completely 
most of the criticism of the parallel narratives of the 
Resurrection falls to the ground. There is not the 
least reason to suppose that the Evangelists told us all 
that they knew, nor yet the least necessity that they 
should have done so. They recorded what was suffi- 
cient for their purpose. And there can be no doubt 
that the Gospels both severally and collectively bring 
before us the Risen Lord as the same and yet changed : 
as having entered with His perfect Manhood on a new 
form of existence ; as having established in His glori- 
fied humanity a new connexion with mankind ; as 
having led His disciples by His personal intercourse 
to grasp these novel conceptions as their abiding 
heritage. 

Now whether this revelation be accepted or not, 
it cannot be doubted that it was original and pregnant 
with consequences. But it has been frequently said 



a New Revelation. 



that the apostles lived in ' an atmosphere of miracles ;' appendix 
that they could not but have framed some explanation IL 
to remove the disappointment caused by their Master's 
death ; and that £ it was inevitable that they should 
'believe Him to have risen again in the body 1 .' It 
might be sufficient to reply that there is, as we have 
already seen, no parallel to the Resurrection either in 
its character or in its effects, and that just so far as 
the idea could be shewn to be familiar it would be 
deprived of its efficacy. If the belief was 'inevitable' 
it would also have been powerless to change opinion 
and life. But, as far as evidence exists, the claim to 
work miracles was not common in the first age, unless 
the practice of exorcism be brought under this head. 
On the contrary, it is most remarkable that the mira- 
cles of Jewish history belong to critical periods of 
comparatively short duration, and to typical men. 
The age of the Maccabees is not marked by miracles. 
'John tvrought no miracle. 1 It is of course quite S. John 
true that the Jews were acquainted with records of x * 41, 
miracles in their Scriptures ; quite true also that they 
could not feel all that is involved in a miracle as we 
do; but it appears from the Gospels that the works of 
Christ, though they were often veiled, created a pro- 
found impression as being wholly unprecedented. It 
is at any rate unquestionable that they overcame 
inveterate prejudices. All this tends to shew that we 
are unconsciously tempted to transfer to the whole 
period of Jewish history phenomena which belong 
to limited manifestations within it, and to use what 

1 Contemporary Review, November, 1876, p. 905. 

19—2 



The Resurrection of Christ 



appendix sprang from Christianity to explain the origin of 
IL Christianity. 

A similar remark applies to the alleged prevalence 
and power of Messianic expectations in the first cen- 
tury. There were indeed some Jews who were looking 
for the promised King when Christ came, or, perhaps 

S. Luke ii. more strictly speaking, for the Kingdom of God, or for 
the consolation of Israel. John the Baptist gave 
distinctness to expectation. But the teaching of John 
and the earlier teaching of the Lord excited question- 
ings rather than satisfied them. It was only when 
the Lord's work was drawing to a close that He 
accepted the title of the Christ from Jews, and then 
under circumstances which shewed how far the confes- 
sion was not only from popular feeling, but even from 
the feeling of the disciples. After the appearance of 
the Lord had called out the religious aspirations of 
the nation, false Christs arose ; but the hopes which 
they embodied were rather due to Christ's action than 
originally contributory to His acceptance. He created 
the idea which He fulfilled in spite of current opinions, 
and in doing this He gave occasion to the character- 
istic embodiment of the ideas wdiich He set aside. So 
far from 1 answering the ideal ' of His followers, He 
gave them a new one, which they were painfully slow 

S. John to grasp. Men could not 'see' the Kingdom of God 

m. 3. which He proclaimed unless they were born again. 

There was practically nothing in the current thoughts 
which Christ encountered which was fitted to call out 
a spontaneous belief in the message of His Resurrec- 
tion. The silence of the Old Testament, the ' bold 
' guesses' and sad negations of Gentile philosophy, are 



a New Revelation. 



293 



equally instructive. The one shews how Divine appendix 
wisdom was constrained to delay the revelation till it IL 
could be presented vitally : the other that reason, 
while baffled by the problem of the future, finds no 
rest in scepticism. When Christ came this only re- 
mained to men as the issue of ages of resolute and 
patient thought, that the instinct by which they clung 
to a continuous personality beyond the grave was at 
hopeless variance with such an analysis of their own 
being as they could make. 

To reconcile this antagonism there was need of a 
new fact. And this fact was given, as we have seen, 
in a manner suited to the end. For that end it was 
enough to shew in a single example the fulness of life 
undiminished by death ; to shew that what seems to be 
dissolution is transformation ; that heaven lies about 
us, and that life eternal is not future but present ; 
that whatever be the unknown glories and endow- 
ments of the after-life, nothing is cast off which rightly 
claims our affection and reverence in this. 

But it may yet be said that the Evangelists at any 
rate write as if they were dealing with ordinary phe- 
nomena, that they shew no perception of the marvel- 
lous or contradictory character of the incidents which 
they relate. The Evangelists certainly write as mem- 
bers of a society in which the divine action was felt to 
be a present reality manifested in many ways. If they 
had recorded miracles calmly, and lived ordinary lives, 
there might be some force in the objection ; but it is 
undeniable that their action corresponded with their 
words. If they wrote as men to whom the ' super- 
natural' was familiar, they lived so too. Everything 



294 The Resurrection of Christ 



which the first Christians did, as well as everything 
which they said, so far as we know, shewed a supreme 
conviction that they were living in an unexampled 
crisis. Heaven (so they said, and their work answered 
to their words) was open about them, and the effects 
of their teaching corresponded with the conviction. 

For the belief in the Resurrection was from the 
first not a belief only, but a spring of energy. The 
disciples were not only assured that their Lord was 
living : they felt that He was with them, and their 
conduct answered to the reality of the feeling. It 
is not then sufficient to shew how a belief in the 
rising of Christ might have been created among men 
familiar with the idea of the Resurrection as we are. 
The problem to be solved is how a belief was created 
which, from the first even till now, has made believers 
act as knowing that it is literally true that when two 
or three are gathered together in Christ's name, there 
He is in the midst of them. This we may safely assert 
was a ' new idea introduced into human conscious- 
' ness,' and fruitful beyond all example 1 . Later visions, 
so far from explaining its origin, serve only as faint 
reflections to witness to its power. 

The Resurrection, to set the matter in another 
light, was not an isolated event. It was and is an 
abiding fact. It was the beginning of a new and living 
relation between the Lord and His people. He came 
to them while He went. The idea may be expressed 
by saying that the apostolic conception of the Resur- 
rection is rather 4 the Lord lives,' than 'the Lord 

1 Mr Macan fails to apprehend the idea of the Eesurrection 
when he denies this, p. 108. 



a New Revelation. 



295 



6 was raised.' This important truth is entirely over- appendix 
looked by critics who lay stress on the point that IL 
'there was no eye-witness of the Resurrection V It 
is impossible to see what we should have gained by 
the testimony of such a witness, or what he could 
have established which was not established by the 
intercourse of the living Lord with His disciples. 
That which had to be made clear as to Christ, was the 
reality of His new life. This was first established for 
the apostles by their complete experience of the con- 
tinuity of His manifestation to them, and for the 
Church in all ages through the signs of His power. 
And it is here that the ' proof of the Resurrection is 
to be found. Christ lives, for He works still. 

I have spoken of the Resurrection as a revelation ; 
it was a revelation in two main respects — as to the 
relation of Christ to men, and as to the relation of 
the present life to the future. In both these respects 
it is undeniable that the belief in the Resurrection 
completely changed the views of the disciples. Before 
the Passion they had been unable to endure the 
thought of any external separation from Christ ; after- 
wards they lived in effectual fellowship with Him 
though He was invisible. His influence was felt to 
be confined within no local limits. An entirely new 
connexion was shewn in life to be established between 
One and all, between the Son of Man and men. The 
disciples looked for His return, but the mode in which 
they conceived of His being preserved them, though in 
many cases not their followers, from sensuous imagin- 
ings of its nature. 

1 S. R. pp. 449, 549 ; Macan, p. 28. 



296 The Resurrection of Christ 



appendix For the apostles' view of the life of the Risen 
Christ was in close dependence on their view of the 
relation of believers to Him. His being was conti- 
nuous with that which they had known ; but it was 
become infinitely glorious, without being deprived of 
anything belonging to the perfection of humanity. 

These two thoughts together opened a prospect of 
the future of individuals which is far larger than the 
popular conceptions of later times. Believers were to 
be transfigured, and at the same time their life was to 
continue in Christ. In other words, a glimpse was 
given of a 'personality' of a raised humanity, in 
which each member was included but not absorbed. 

At the same time light was thrown upon the dark 
mysteries of sin and suffering. The uttermost sorrow 
was the preparation for the most complete triumph. 
Once for all, that dualism to which the phenomena of 
this world taken by themselves seem to point was 
shewn to be false. 

Nor can we stop at man. The apostles felt that 
the Resurrection had a message in regard to all 
creation. Man was bound up with the whole visible 
order, and this, too, was, as they announced, to partake 
of his restoration, and to be included in the divine 
consummation of all things. 

Such a final unity, to touch upon the last mystery 
of all, is referred to an archetypal unity. The Resur- 
rection appears, in the New Testament, as the fulfil- 
ment through victory of a purpose involved in creation, 
but checked in its normal progress by the self-assertion 
of the finite 1 . 

1 This truth is plainly expressed in Col. i. 15 fL, and does 
not remain to be 4 excogitated,' Macan, p. 141. 



a New Revelation. 297 

Now such thoughts as these evidently reach to the appendix 
last problems of life, and illuminate them. Such IL 
thoughts now directly from the Resurrection if the 
fact be accepted simply as it is presented to us in the 
Gospels ; and, as it is admitted, they were set forth 
by the apostles in virtue of their belief in it. Our 
contention is that nothing but the fact can explain 
their origin, and the power with which they were 
propagated. The reality of the Resurrection and the 
action of the Spirit of the Risen Christ is a sufficient 
cause for the announcement and for the spread of the 
Gospel, and no other has been brought forward. 

But when stress is laid upon the correspondence 
of the Gospel of the Resurrection with man's nature, 
it is said that that very correspondence furnishes a 
presumption that man devised that which answered 
to his wishes. There is, however, a wide difference 
between recognising and creating. All pre-Christian 
experience is unfavourable to the theory that man had 
any tendency to find such a solution of his difficulties 
as the Resurrection offers. The whole discipline of 
the world prepared men to welcome the Gospel, but 
had no power to produce it. And this second corre- 
spondence of the Resurrection with the course of 
human progress, no less than with the constitution of 
man, forms another strong sign of its divine reality to 
every one who believes in a Providence. To such a 
one, it is not too much to say that the Resurrection, 
taken in connexion with the history of the race before 
and after, is antecedently more probable than any 
particular event in the life of any individual man. So 
far is it from being contrary to 'universal experience,' 



298 The Resurrection of Christ 

appendix that it is in a most true sense according to universal 
experience, for it is seen universally that aspirations, 
tendencies, instincts, are not left for ever unattained 
and unsatisfied l . 

If now we consider the direct evidence for the fact 
of the Resurrection from this position, it will be found 
to be overwhelming. It is, of course, idle to affect to 
discuss evidence for an event if it is laid down that 
the event 4s at once disposed of on abstract grounds 2 ,' 
or to insist on the testimony of ' documents which 
record miracles if ' a supernatural phenomenon is to 
£ be at once rejected:' for on this assumption they are 
already declared to be untrustworthy. But if the 
Resurrection and the testimony by which it is main- 
tained are examined in the light of a belief in the 
Providential government of the world, of a belief, that 
is, that there is a purpose and a goal for man, and 
men, and nature, then it is difficult to see how the 
evidence could have been, according to the analogy of 
history, more complete. We have, in the Synoptic 
Gosj3els and the appendix to St Mark (to summarise 
results which appear to me to be unquestionable), a 
general view of the oral teaching of the Twelve, which 
was the original foundation of the Church : we have 
in the writings of St Paul, who must have been well 

1 But for a strange misunderstanding of this sentence I 
should have thought it unnecessary to say that the Resurrec- 
tion of Christ does seem to me to give the satisfaction which we 
need now in our present life, which is, as I have endeavoured 
to shew, completely transfigured by it in every region of thought 
and observation and work. 

2 S. R. in. 522. 



a New Revelation. 



299 



acquainted with the earliest belief of Christians, an appendix 
explicit statement of what he ' received ' and taught IL 
with intense personal conviction won through expe- 
rience : we have in the Gospel of St John the per- 
sonal testimony of one who had actually seen and 
heard the Risen Lord ; and these three distinct lines 
of evidence are in complete accordance as to the 
reality, the nature, and the effects of the Resurrection 
of Christ. It is utterly unhistorical to say that 

* the whole of the evidence for the Kesurrection reduces itself 
to an undefined belief on the part of a few persons, in a noto- 
riously superstitious age, that after Jesus had died and been 
buried they had seen him alive V 

The belief of the original witnesses was so clear that 
it completely revolutionised their national expecta- 
tions ; so energetic that it changed their whole charac- 
ter; so vivid that it was from the very first expressed 
in rites which symbolise with most remarkable power 
the fundamental thought of life through death. It 
answers questions which men cannot but ask, and that 
in a way wholly unanticipated and coextensive with 
the utmost range of knowledge ; it is supported, not 
only by specific testimony, which, from the nature of 
things, must be partial and fragmentary and capable 
of misinterpretation, but by that underlying trust in 
the reality of the divine government and the divine 
destiny of creation which is 'practically infinite.' 
For the direct voice of testimony is a very small part 
of the evidence by which the Resurrection is esta- 
blished. The Resurrection explains, as nothing else 
can explain, the acts and words of Christ before it, 

1 S. JR. p. 519. 



300 The Resurrection of Christ 



appendix and of His apostles after it; it gives a sufficient reason 
IL for the spiritual power and insight of the first Chris- 
tians, which is different in kind from all that went 
before ; it explains the life of Christendom, for it is 
not a past event only, but a fact attested by its present 
efficacy, by the signs of an actual union of believers 
with the Son of Man operative in life. If, now, we 
give fair weight to all these considerations, upon the 
assumptions which have been laid down, — to the 
personal attestation of the fact by the apostles, to the 
circumstances under which St Paul was led to pro- 
claim it, to its relation to Christ's whole work, to the 
transformation which it effected in the opinions and 
conduct of the first disciples, to its continuous efficiency 
in life, to its consilience with instinct, to its harmony 
with what we can see of the divine discipline of the 
world, — I find no reason to modify what I have said 
elsewhere, that, 'taking all the evidence together, 
' there is no single historical incident better or more 
' variously supported than the Resurrection of Christ.' 

Let any one who thinks otherwise endeavour to 
frame for himself evidence for the whole fact — for the 
fact, that is, as belonging to two orders, the seen and 
the unseen, and uniting them — which he thinks would 
have been more satisfactory than that which we 
possess, and then candidly determine how far the 
modifications which he has introduced would have 
removed his difficulties, and how far they would have 
detracted from the significance of the fact as a ' sign, 7 
a Divine Revelation. 



a New Revelation. 



301 



III. 

The view which has been given of the Resurrec- 
tion as a Revelation will serve to shew in what sense 
Christianity is said to be 'a historical religion.' The 
phrase is ambiguous, and, as applied to Christianity, 
it is persistently misinterpreted by critics who speak 
of Buddhism or Mohammedanism as ' historical ' in 
the same sense. It is true, no doubt, that these three 
religions are so far alike that they owe their origin to 
historical personages. It is possible to fix their begin- 
ning and progress with more or less completeness in 
connexion with definite circumstances. But it is not 
in this relation that Christianity is described as his- 
torical. Christianity is described as a historical reli- 
gion because its teaching — in regard to its doctrines, 
its motives, its promises — is conveyed in facts. 

In this respect the Gospel is absolutely unique. 
The Lord claimed to come, not as a prophet, but as 
One greater than prophet or temple, as 'the Trutli 
' and the Life.' And as such He was preached 
and accepted. What the apostles proclaimed was a 
Person who had died and risen again, by whose Death 
and Resurrection light, as they affirmed, was thrown 
upon the final mysteries of being. They very rarely 
quote His words, but everywhere speak of what He 
was and is, of His work, of His power, of His 
presence. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of 
this unquestionable character of the apostolic message. 
Nothing can be more certain than that the apostles 



The Resurrection of Christ 



appendix did not regard their Lord as one simply who had 
declared new truths or who had made old truths 
plainer. Every interpretation of the rise of Chris- 
tianity must be fatally misleading which does not take 
Christ's Person, what He did, what befell Him, what 
He was therefore held to be, as the novel power by 
which men were moved. 

This historical foundation of Christianity is seen 
most strikingly in the writings of St Paul. Perhaps 
we might have expected from his intellectual constitu- 
tion, and from the circumstances of his conversion, 
that he would have rested on abstract dogmas, on 
1 the Christ within ; ' but, in fact, Christ ' of the 
'seed of David,' 'born of a woman, born under the 
' Law,' is the centre of his faith. It has been said that 
it is ' a most striking and extraordinary fact that the 
'life and teaching of Jesus have scarcely a place in the 
' system of Paul V If St Paul had regarded Christ as 
a prophet only, the remark would have been just : as 
it is, so far as it is true, it places in more conspicuous 
prominence the meaning which St Paul found in ' the 
' blood of Christ,' in the historic person and human 
work of Him ' who died and rose again.' The facts 
of Christ's life, the facts which are recited in the 
earliest creeds, are the revelation of sin and righteous- 
ness which he unfolds ; they are never absent from 
his mind : without them his teaching is unintelligible. 

This truth may be exhibited in another way. In 
the Epistles of St Paul, no less than in the preaching 
recorded in the Acts, the facts of the Faith precede 
the dogmas. And the relation holds good always. 
1 S. B. in. 567. 



a Neiu Revelation. 303 

The dogmas are the progressive and approximate appendix 
interpretation of the facts. As the facts are more IL 
completely understood the dogmas become more and 
more fully denned. For this reason the apprehension 
of Christian truth can never be final, and it can never 
be exhausted. Each fresh acquisition of knowledge 
as to the relation of man to man and of man to the 
world throws light upon Christian work. Teaching 
necessarily reflects in some measure the modes of 
thought of the age to which it belongs, but the broad 
facts of a human life grow more luminous as life itself 
is more deeply studied. The Death and the Resur- 
rection of the Son of Man are felt by us to mean far 
more than could have been grasped by an earlier gene- 
ration. 

It is undoubtedly true that at present we receive 
the facts and the dogmatic interpretation of the facts 
simultaneously \ too often perhaps we are tempted to 
lose the facts in the dogmas. But this circumstance 
cannot alter the essential relation in which they stand 
to one another. At every crisis of thought it is our 
duty to turn again to the records of Christ's work, not 
in a spirit of superficial realism, but with a strenuous 
endeavour to follow out, as far as our powers will 
allow us 1 , the consequences which are involved in that 
union of the divine and human, of the seen and the 
unseen, which we believe to have been fulfilled in the 

1 The unhappy boldness of later speculation on the state of 
the disembodied spirit, when compared with the silence of 
Scripture upon the subject, offers an instructive illustration 
of the neglect of this limitation. It is strange that this con- 
trast should be misunderstood (Macan, pp. 154 fif.). 



304 The Resurrection of Christ 



present order of life and to remain as the foundation 
and the goal of hope and faith and love. 

This principle, which has an obvious application to 
our main subject, requires to be insisted upon, because 
it is frequently overlooked or misunderstood. The 
Christian Faith, as a system, is the interpretation of 
the facts of Christ's life in the light of the assumptions 
which, as we have seen, are everywhere made in the 
Bible. The interpretation may come in different ways. 
At one time it is through the inward voice of God, at 
another time through a better understanding of apo- 
stolic words, at another through the experience of life, 
at another through the investigation of the ' laws ' of 
nature ; but in every case the Person of Christ and 
the facts of His life are the final sum of the eternal 
Gospel, the abiding test by which every approxima- 
tion to the fulness of truth is tried. 



IV. 

It follows from what has been said that the belief 
in Christ's Resurrection is not merely the belief in a 
past event, but in a present, or rather in an eternal, 
fact. It is sometimes said that Eomanists are more 
consistent or more logical than ' Anglicans and Pro- 
■ testants,' in that they afiirm the reality of a present 
revelation to which the latter make no pretence. The 
statement is, I venture to believe, a complete miscon- 
ception. All Christians alike, as I suppose, believe 
equally in the unbroken intercourse between God and 
man, which is the essence of revelation ; but the 



a New Revelation. 



305 



Romanist holds to the permanence of old forms in the 
mode of revelation, while others consider that the 
mode of revelation, as being a function of life, will 
vary with the progress of humanity. In one age, or 
at one period of popular growth, isolated ' signs ' can 
be seen to be the most appropriate vehicle for convey- 
ing a divine message. In another age or at another 
period, corresponding lessons may come through the 
investigation of history or of nature which was impos- 
sible before. In each case God speaks to men as they 
can hear Him, and according to the knowledge which 
they have gained of Him. 

It is most untrue, therefore, to affirm that the 
frank acceptance of ' critical ' methods in the investi- 
gation of the records of past revelation involves any 
abandonment of the Supernatural.' The study of 
the Bible in such a spirit enables us undoubtedly to 
realise a completer harmony between the ordinary 
processes of thought and action and those which God 
has been pleased to use for the conveyance of His 
lessons, but none the less the facts, and the record and 
interpretation of the facts, retain their divine charac- 
ter wholly unimpaired. The question as to the record 
(for example) is whether we suppose that the guidance 
was given directly, or through character, experience, 
circumstances. In the latter case there is as much 
room for divine action as in the former ; and if it 
appears that we can most rightly apprehend ' inspira- 
' tion ' in the past in this way, we are at once encour- 
aged to look for some manifestations of the Divine 
will now, which will come also to us through the 
ordinary channels of life and thought. So far from 
W. E. 20 



806 The Resurrection of Christ 

1 criticism ' obscuring the work of God, it opens our 
eyes to see it going on about us. 

This is not the occasion to pursue such reflections 
in detail ; but certainly nothing is more remarkable 
than the way in which the apostolic writers bring out 
the eternal aspects of the facts which they proclaim, 
without admixture of anything which was local and 
temporal. They exhibit in different directions that 
universality of character which every historian must 
recognise in Christ. And it is important to notice 
that this characteristic is derived naturally from the 
message of the Resurrection which they announced. 
They felt and they expressed, what we have not yet 
come to understand, that the belief in the resurrection 
' in Christ ' carries with it a belief in the continuity, 
the solidarity, the totality (if I may so speak) of crea- 
tion. The unity of being, of which science is slowly 
shaping a conception, was for them a unity of life 
tending to an issue of unimaginable glory. 

The Resurrection, indeed, gives a permanent value 
to all human effort and achievement. As long as the 
earth was held to be the everlasting scene of man's 
dominion, each worker could look forward to an 
endless life in posterity ; but we know now that the 
earth itself can exist only for a time, and a hope of 
immortality requires the assurance of life continued 
under new conditions. This, as we have seen, is 
exactly what the apostolic records are fitted to convey. 
They meet, unexpectedly as it might appear, a diffi- 
culty of the latest time; they receive illustration from 
researches supposed to be alien in scope and spirit. 

In this respect, as in all points, the Gospel of the 



a New Revelation. 



307 



Resurrection answers to the whole sum of life. The appendix 
fact of the Resurrection is as divinely original as the IL 
character of Christ. It adds the element of con- 
tinuance, the possibility of consecration, to every 
earthly interest. It offers the fulness of truth, as 
against the one-sided materialism which will acknow- 
ledge nothing as real but the objects of sense, and the 
one-sided spiritualism which disparages the outward. 
It represents, like life itself, a combination of anti- 
theses. But this superficial conflict of elements is 
inevitable as long as man is regarded in action. For 
the present we must speak, even as we must think, 
according to the limitations which are imposed upon 
us. But these limitations are shewn, in Christ, not 
to be inherent in our personality. Our individual 
personality is shewn to be contributory to some vaster 
'personality.' The unity of which we are conscious 
becomes the figure of a unity of humanity, of a unity 
of creation. 



CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. & SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



